Freebsd 5.3 Performance

[Tm4528 at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/6/05 4:51:10 AM Eastern Standard Time, dave at horsfall.org 
writes:
> 4.10 *is* supported, and 5.3 works "as advertised" - what the hell is your
> *problem* exactly???
Its been well documented that 5.3 does NOT work as advertised, and the 
newest intel chipsets (not that new) don't work in 4.10, redering is useless
with the newer intel processors. To quote Robert watson of the Freebsd 
core team who posted to this list on Nov 11, 2004:
" 
FreeBSD 5.3 sees an observably higher per-packet processing costs than the
4.x branch due to in-progress changes to the synchronization and queueing
models. Specifically, the SMPng work has changed the interrupt and
synchronization models throughout the kernel in order to increase
concurrency and preemptibility (i.e., lower latency in interrupt-based
processing). However, this has increaseed the overall overhead of
synchronization on the stack. The network stack forwarding path is
particularly sensitive to this, so while other parts of the system see
immediate concurrency benefits (i.e., socket-centric web servers that now
see less contention on SMP, and more preemption on UP), this path still
runs slower for many workloads. We're actively working to remedy this,
and you will see changes merged to the 6.x and 5.x branches over the next
couple of months that will cut into the numbers you see above by quite a
bit. Off the top of my head, I would have expected to see more around a
15% overhead on UP for the workload you're seeing, but as you point out,
results can and do vary."

5.3 is not ready for production. 4.10 should be fully supported until it is.

TM