Subject: Re: Multi proc support
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Aaron J. Grier <agrier@poofygoof.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 02/07/2002 13:42:53
On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 09:35:48PM +0100, Jaromir Dolecek wrote:

> 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.

I asked David Green about this a couple years ago -- at that time the
FreeBSD crew had the kernel divided into at two locks: one for I/O and
one for everything else.  but that was then...  the "SMPng" project is
heading towards much finer grained locking.  they have a status page at
http://www.freebsd.org/smp/index.html .

of course I'm sure that when the time comes the analogous NetBSD
implementation will be just as good, run on half a dozen different
multiprocessor platforms, and have elegant readable code to boot.  :)

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofygoof.com
      "[...] I generally haven't found IDM guys to be very good
       live acts, most of them just sit down at their laptop and
       tweak reaktor."  -- Brandon Daniel