FBSD 6.2 Xeon 2.4ghz CPU and high load

[Matthew Seaman]

Wojciech Puchar wrote:
>> FreeBSD 6.2 is I believe slower than 4.11 for single processor systems
>> and processes which pretty much run single threaded -- ie. exactly what
>> you're trying to run.  This would cause exactly the sort of symptoms 
>> you're
>> seeing.

Actually I was mistaken: I saw 4.11 and 2.4GHz Xeon and assumed the OP was using
2004-era hardware.  The whole "Quad Core" thing just didn't register.

> and what most unix users do.

It is what a lot of unix users have done historically, but now that there is good
support coming through for highly threaded, parallelized applications, developers
are going to write more and users are going to run more applications that exploit
that.

It's not a "Unix way" versus "Other OS Way" thing -- its a response to the change
in direction hardware development has taken over the past several years.   Chip
manufacturers have all but given up on the race to outdo each other on the MHz
or GHz rating of their products.  Nowadays it's all about how many CPU cores and
how much cache RAM there is on each chip.  4 cores and 8MB is just the latest
step in that evolutionary arms race.  

>> Try 7.0 instead -- it has all of the speed at multi-threaded, multi-core
>> type stuff but has also regained the sort of performance levels you could
> 
> so 4.11 is fastest?

It depends very much on the application load you have to support and the sort
of hardware you have available.  For the sort of multicore chips that are all the
rage nowadays, I'd go with 7.0 every time, even running single threaded
applications.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW

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