*BSD News Article 36371


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!swiss.ans.net!news.dfn.de!Germany.EU.net!EU.net!uunet!news.oec.com!outland.oec.com!doyle
From: doyle@OEC.COM (Jim Doyle)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: dual procesor motherboards the way forward?
Date: 30 Sep 1994 19:29:32 GMT
Organization: Open Environment Corporation
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <36hous$fdv@exile.oec.com>
References: <Cww6x9.1A0@gnome.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: outland.oec.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

: Would it
: be better to just place the kernel on one processor and run all other
: processes on the other; or some form of dynamic load balance which
: will have some overhead? Anyway I am sure the FreeBSD and NetBSD teams
: could have some fun with this after they have tired with porting 4.4
: BSD.

This sort of evil non-canonical SMP has been attempted by other
vendors before..

I'd say your best bet is to wait until the LiteSS or LinuxSS
single-servers become available.. Port Mach 3.0 to your MP hardware
platform an use that. Since the Unix single-server relies upon the
Mach kernel to schedule threads onto the processor pool, it should be
cleaner to achieve a real SMP Unix implementation.

BTW- The Mach 3.0 code for several SMP machines is freely available.
Sequent Symmetry (24 x i386) and Omron Luna (4 x MC88000) come to 
mind. 

-- Jim Doyle