James Webster wrote:
> I've been using NetBSD for a number of years as a hobbiest, but
> I just was asked to setup a *nix system at work to do some bench
> marking.  The hardware I have is a compaq DL380 with 4 procs and
> a SmartStart Raid controller.  I found the Raid controller in the
> hardware compatibility list, but I couldnt find any info on multi-proc
> support in NetBSD.

There is a not-yet-stabilized SMP support for x86 on an experimental
branch.  Though it appears fairly stable in some configuration, it
has problems in anothers. It's getting closer to be generally
usable, but is not "there" yet.  Thus, don't use it for a production
system ATM.

OTOH, if you can afford to spend some time on it, it would prolly
be quite cool if you could try the branch on the machine. Just
keep in mind that it's experimental, nonstable code, and be prepared
for kernel panics or data lossage.

If the benchmarking involves only I/O, I imagine system using just
one processor (and without processor interlocking) _might_ outperform
a system using all four CPUs. Very much depends on usage pattern.

AFAIK FreeBSD SMP is giant-lock-SMP at the moment too. It would
be interesting to find out how well NetBSD and/or FreeBSD SMP
performs compared to Linux in quad processor configuration.

Jaromir
-- 
Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org> http://www.NetBSD.org/Ports/i386/ps2.html
-=  Those who would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserve  =-
-=  neither liberty nor safety, and will lose both.  -- Benjamin Franklin  =-