Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:21:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Hugh LaMaster <lamaster@george.arc.nasa.gov> To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: *** Real Action Item: SPECweb Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.980424125129.24918E-100000@george.arc.nasa.gov> In-Reply-To: <3540E43F.83D3A0D5@ibm.net>
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On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, Don Wilde wrote: > Yep, that was the first thing I noticed. 5 _Intelligent_ 100Base-T cards > in theirs. I'm not arguing against the Intel cards, but, isn't the performance on DEC Tulip cards about as good? Any numbers somewhere on this? > If we could find an ATM or Gigabit Ethernet card or Fibre CHannel card > that would mimic a PCI net card, that would give us a boost to the next > level, where the 33Mhz PCI becomes the limiting factor. If it uses Drivers have already been written for the Packet Engines G-NIC cards. I would guess that porting the G-NIC drivers to 3.0-current should be easy. What would be on the receiving end of all this data, BTW? As for the PPro vs. 400 Mhz P II - last weekend, I checked out Intel's information and compared it to other numbers I have. Based on that, it appears that the memory bandwidth of the BX chipset w/ SDRAM is (finally) pretty good. And, it isn't on the PPro/Natoma. So, for some kind of bake-off test, I would strongly suggest getting a 400 MHz P II, a new BX-based board (e.g. SuperMicro), and 100 Mhz 8ns unbuffered "PC100 certified" SDRAM - it appears that it really will run at x-1-1-1 and hopefully get at least twice the memory bandwidth of an 233 MHz PentiumMMX on HX chipset- at least if the numbers I saw pan out. [e.g. Intel has published STREAM numbers in its Performance Brief. Looks pretty good in comparison to previous x86's.] Also, I would get the dual-processor motherboard and play around with it, but, I have to believe that the single processor version will be a lot faster in any network-bandwidth-limited test. I doubt if the bcopy()'s in the network stack are multi-threaded in the SMP kernel. MP systems are good when you have several processes with at least one in mostly user-state- even for a single user, with lots of time in the X server, and in a CPU-intensive user program, etc. But, if this test (I'm not sure exactly what test is being discussed, but, if it involves 5 100baseT cards ...) is going to be limited by the network stack, go with the single-CPU kernel/system. For the SCSI controller, it sounds like either the Adaptec 7895 or Symbios 3C876 based cards would do - the new SCSI code will support tagged queuing on either of these chipsets, correct? [The 7895 is now available built in to some motherboards, e.g., Supermicro BX boards, freeing up another slot for NICs. Has anybody got one of these boards working yet on 3.0-current? It should make a pretty decent workstation.] Now, what *Big Contest* is being discussed here anyway? -- Hugh LaMaster, M/S 233-21, ASCII Email: hlamaster@mail.arc.nasa.gov NASA Ames Research Center Or: lamaster@george.arc.nasa.gov Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 No Junkmail: USC 18 section 2701 Phone: 650/604-1056 Disclaimer: Unofficial, personal *opinion*. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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