Subject: Re: MP?
To: None <woods@weird.com>
From: Havard Eidnes <he@netbsd.org>
List: port-alpha
Date: 01/19/2004 17:58:20
Hi,

some more data points:

I've just done a successful "-j 2" of -current on my cs20 running
NetBSD-current code from Dec 8 2003, and yes, this is also with
two setiathome clients running at the same time.

> In my mind this issue is a serious show-stopper for 1.6.x on
> Alpha (we can't seriously claim MP support on Alpha for 1.6.x
> right now), though I guess it's not really a show-stopper for
> 1.6.2 on any other platforms, and 1.6.2-RC1 does seem quite
> stable on Alphas not running MP.

Well, it's not really a show-stopper for 1.6.2 on alpha either,
since what's in 1.6.2 isn't a regression (i.e. "no worse") in
functionality compared to what was in 1.6.1 or 1.6.

If someone is up to the task of digging out the relevant MD
changes from -current to stabilize MP operation for alpha on
netbsd-1-6, I'm all for it, but my guess is that it's going to be
difficult, as the changes may depend on other things (possibly
MI) which may again depend on others etc. etc.  It may be that
the number of associated changes would be so large that it would
not make sense from a general stability point of view to apply
them all to the netbsd-1-6 branch.

At least as the code stands today, if you have an alpha MP
system, you really should be trying to run -current instead of
code from netbsd-1-6 which is reported to have known problems in
this area.

Regards,

- H=E5vard