broadcom 57710 support

[Barney Cordoba]

--- On Tue, 7/21/09, Attila Nagy <bra at fsn.hu> wrote:

> From: Attila Nagy <bra at fsn.hu>
> Subject: Re: broadcom 57710 support
> To: "Barney Cordoba" <barney_cordoba at yahoo.com>
> Cc: freebsd-net at freebsd.org, "Hooman Fazaeli" <ebastan10 at yahoo.com>
> Date: Tuesday, July 21, 2009, 8:51 AM
> Barney Cordoba wrote:
> >> Any one knows if there is any near plan to develop
> drivers
> >> for
> >> 
> >> network cards based on broadcom NetXtereme II
> 57710
> >> 
> >> 10 GbE controller?
> >> 
> >> -----------------------
> >> best regards
> >> Hooman Fazaeli
> >>     
> > 
> > Ok, I'll bite. What is so special about this
> particular part that you simply must use it in your 10GbE
> server?
> > 
> >   
> A possible cause -at least for me- is that HP switched from
> the Gigabit Broadcoms for these 10GE versions. So newer
> machines (for example the HP BL460c G6) come with Broadcom
> 57711 instead of the 57xx ones (supported by bge and bce).
> 

I wouldn't use a "new" server that doesn't support Nehelam. You're better
off getting a 1U server that has exactly what you want in it, rather than
having to hope that whoever happens to write a driver for this new part
does a good job. Even then you're stuck with last year's CPU model, 
guaranteeing 20% less performance. 

Barney