Ultra 5 gigabit NIC

[Pyun YongHyeon]

On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 03:35:23PM +0200, Sten Spans wrote:
 > On Sun, 5 Jun 2005, Doug White wrote:
 > 
 > >On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, Evan Sayer wrote:
 > >
 > >>Can anyone recommend a reliable gigabit NIC for a Sun Ultra 5 under
 > >>FreeBSD 5.2.1?
 > >
 > >Considering the U5 only has 32 bit 33MHz PCI, it'll never even get close
 > >to pushing that much b/w so as long as its supported under sparc64 you
 > >should be fine.
 > 
 > Sun gigabit 1/2 isn't supported afaik.
 > Sun gigaswift comes as bge and cassini. The bge versions probably work.
 > Intel em is only supported with a patch to the driver, and it will
 > still suck when using jumbo frames.

AFAIK em(4) is the only one that works on sparc64.(stock em(4) driver
does not work at all.) Jumbo frame issues of em(4) comes from Intel's
stupid design mistake. The driver should do non-aligned access whenever
jumbo frame is used. This would decrease performance though not
generate panic on x86.

 > Syskonnect cards have solaris drivers, they probably work with freebsd.
 > 

sk(4) should be taught to take advantage of busdma(9).

 > None of these are really fast. On intel boxen the fast cpu makes up
 > somewhat for the crappy pci speed, and most of the onboard gigabit
 > is connected to a dedicated bus. On alpha, sparc, power, pa-risc in the
 > 300-500 mhz range  you'll get about 300-400 mbit tops.
 > 
 > Intel boxen with 933-1133-2800 mhz, 64bit pci and em do about 800-900mbit.
 > 

Agreed. :-(
I don't know how fast CPU is required to get full gigabit speed.

-- 
Regards,
Pyun YongHyeon
http://www.kr.freebsd.org/~yongari	|	yongari at freebsd.org