SMP support maturity? AMD64x2 or FX-57?

[Vinny Abello]

At 04:27 PM 7/22/2005, Frank Mayhar wrote:
>Brandon Fosdick wrote:
>>SMP support in FreeBSD seems to be a perpetually favorite feature 
>>to gripe about, but every release seems to say that its getting 
>>better. I'm about to build a new server and am trying to determine 
>>if I should go with dual procs or just a single. The AMD64x2 is 
>>slightly cheaper than the FX-57 so I'm leaning that way, but it 
>>would be a rather pointless savings if SMP isn't well supported.
>>So, is SMP in -STABLE ready for primetime? Can it really make use 
>>of two processors?
>
>Sigh.  You know, I've been running with two processors since 4.1 or 
>thereabouts.  Sure, the BGL scheme is inefficient as far as the 
>kernel itself is concerned, but for compute-bound user processes it 
>worked just fine.  Naturally I avoided 5.0/1/2 for my production 
>boxen, waiting for the complete overhaul of SMP to stabilize, but 
>when I booted 5.3, everything was fine and I haven't looked back.
>
>Personally I don't have the first clue what people have found to 
>gripe about.  It has been good, it got a _lot_ better in 5.x, and 
>it's continuing to improve.
>
>Ports to new processor families are an entirely different kettle of 
>fish and have their own sets of problems, virtually all of which 
>have to do with the new architecture and not with the general SMP 
>support itself.
>--
>Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com     http://www.exit.com/
>Exit Consulting                 http://www.gpsclock.com/
>                                 http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/

I agree. I'm not a FreeBSD expert by any means, but I do enjoy using 
it very much. I've learned a lot about it over the past year or so 
that I've been running it. I have both a 4.11 and 5.4 box that have 
dual processors and are running like champs. The 5.4 box is doing a 
lot more work actually, and it never has a problem. It's been all 
good for me, but then again, I probably don't delve quite as deeply 
into some of the complex heavy loaded things other do.

Vinny Abello
Network Engineer
Server Management
vinny at tellurian.com
(973)300-9211 x 125
(973)940-6125 (Direct)
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