On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 06:48:08PM -0700, Rick Kelly wrote:
> Grant Beattie said:
> 
> >If replacing existing boxes with NetBSD is on the agenda, excellent
> >hardware support for popular server platforms would be highly
> >beneficial. I think too much emphasis is placed on x86 hardware. It's
> >popular, but we all know it's far from perfect.
> 
> We need SMP on popular server platforms.
> 
> IBM Power
> Alpha
> Sun 4m and Ultrasparc
> Intel x86
> Athlon MP
> HP
> 
> And I know that this is an enormous amount of work. But it would be
> great to have SMP for AMD Hammer when it ships.

I second this.  This is one of the big stumbling blocks for me both at
home and at work.  I've had to pass NetBSD up for Linux and Solaris more
than once because of this.

Is there any way we could fund SMP support?  The last time I donated
any money, it was just for the general OS, but I'd like to be able to
be specific about it.

During the good times, I'd even be willing to purchase something like
an SS20 for research purposes, or do so together with several people.

Maybe if this kind of thing got started, we could convince some people with
much bigger pockets to fund something much more serious.

> Sun gave equipment and information to the Linux guys.

A letter to businesses might be enough to get them to let go
of potential tax liabilities with more than one CPU... :)

That's been done in the past to get equipment for various projects, so it
might very well work for something like NetBSD.

-- 
UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza__________________________________shannon@widomaker.com