Subject: Re: Multiprocessor with NetBSD ?
To: Erik E. Fair <fair@clock.org>
From: Jason R Thorpe <thorpej@zembu.com>
List: current-users
Date: 06/03/2001 07:23:09
On Sun, Jun 03, 2001 at 03:04:30AM -0700, Erik E. Fair wrote:

 > Jason, just to be accurate, does NetBSD/alpha have a sufficiently 
 > re-entrant kernel that it can run simultaneously on all processors, 
 > as required? Do we do interrupt processing on all processors?

General I/O interrupts, no.  Clock interrupts, yes.

 > So far as I can tell, no one in the open-source OS world has SMP 
 > going yet. Some have a form of MP working, and are being very loose 
 > with the term "Symmetric Multiprocessing" in the furtherance of their 
 > marketing...

So, "symmetric multiprocessing", as I have always understood the term,
simply refers to the ability for all processors to run general kernel
code, not necessarily concurrently.  Please correct me if I am simply
confused on this point :-)

-- 
        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@zembu.com>