Subject: Re: hydra?
To: David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
From: Neil A. Carson <neil@causality.com>
List: port-arm32
Date: 05/19/2000 22:57:15
David Brownlee wrote:
>
> Still... it could be an interesting project for anyone lucky
> enough to have one :)
>
> Would the hardware be capable of SMP under NetBSD if the code was
> there?
Nope, you can't do SMP with ARMs. The most the API was going to do
(which is similar to the stuff I worked on in the RISC OS support code)
was allow you to 'dd' some code to a /dev/hydracpu0, /dev/hydracpu1,
etc. We discussed some wacky other stuff at the time, but the hardware
makes it too hard.
The best you can maybe do is some sort of distributed-type approach but
that's tough to do in a useful manner with a monolithic kernel, unless
you run one kernel on each CPU.
In any case, it's all academic value now anyway: The product's dead, the
machine's bus crippled it anyway, blahdy blah etc.
Neil