*BSD News Article 52902


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
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From: mis@world.std.com (Mark Seiden)
Subject: Re: performance problems with intel etherexpress/bsdi 2.0.1/intel p6
Message-ID: <DGCJ66.Ku9@world.std.com>
Keywords: poor performance
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
References: <DG5CL5.FLI@world.std.com> <45a4uc$f83@raid.us.dell.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 17:27:42 GMT
Lines: 36

james@raid.us.dell.com (James Van Artsdalen) writes:

>In <DG5CL5.FLI@world.std.com>, mis@world.std.com (Mark Seiden) wrote:

>> for a special event (see http://www.1010.org) we are trying
>> to get 2.0.1 running on a p6 with an intel ex board.
>> 
>> at the moment ftp performance is around 1kB/sec.  yucko.
>> the behavior is bursty.  transfers a few kB then times out.

>You need to give more detail on the peripheral cards.
>One wonders if there is a bus master / DMA device in the
>system and if the (brand new, beta) chipset/CPU is handling
>these sorts of cycles correctly.

this was in the intel-furnished beta program configuration for win nt.
i would think intel themselves would know how to configure their own
hardware but what do i know...

we used a 3com 3c509 for the event and performance was satisfactory.
nothing else changed.

unfortunately, we were too overloaded to track down the actual problem.

>I would personally break out the logic analyzer at this point
>and look at the PCI or ISA bus for constipation of some sort.

>If none of the peripherals are bus master or DMA, then another
>possibility is that some delay loops are running too fast in the
>kernel device driver.  Perhaps a non-Intel NIC would work better:
>The SMC NIC's work fine in my 133 MHz P-5.
>The 3com NIC's seem to get kernel error messages about the "FIFO"
>occasionally, but I'm told this does no harm(???).
>-- 
>James R. Van Artsdalen          james@dell.com            "Live Free or Die"
>Dell Computer Co    9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759-7299    512-728-8789