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NetBSD/Alpha goes multiprocessor
chaoskitty writes "Jason Thorpe has gotten multiprocessor NetBSD/Alpha to go multiuser! He has already done a kernel build and full userland build with the multiprocessor kernel. More details are in Jason's message to the NetBSD tech-smp list.
Otherwise I'd be severely disappointed, but I'm sure you meant multiprocessor. Now we'll just wait and see how many posts we get on "Wow, it just went multiuser when Linux has been doing this forever?? No wonder *BSD is dying!" ;-)
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
The article states NetBSD/Alpha, not NetBSD/x86...
Your MP Athlon will be nice, but it won't be useful for NetBSD =)
Any app which either uses system threads, or forks child processes, will automatically be split amoungst processors at the behest of the task scheduler. Doesn't require a recompile, unless there's green threading vs native threading or some such, but it does require the app itself be written with some form of multiprocessing in mind. Such enhancements also have benefits on single-processor machines, so quite a few are so written these days, where appropriate.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Negative on the BSD x86 SMP only. MacOS X supports SMP on PowerPC G3 and G4 dual CPU systems, and it's BSD all the way.
Ok, some clarity seems to be needed here.
:-)
:-)
1) This is news.
2) Alpha is a type of CPU. DEC made 'em and since spending US$9.5 Million on a Monday in 1998, Compaq make 'em.
3) NetBSD runs on many platforms
4) On this paricular platform (alpha), NetBSD has had Multiprocessor alpha for a little while, but it dosen't matter much until you can make it go multiuser.
5) This is news, because compaq make some "big-ass" alpha systems (32x Alpha = Floating Point like AMD and Intel dream of
6) Our sweet lil OS (I run it on Alpha and VAX DEC equipment) runs on even more big systems, this may even be the biggest.
If you have a spare alpha + vt320, then so the lil box a favor and see http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/alpha/ then join port-alpha@netbsd.org.
It clensed my soul.
My Reply
It's about time someone posted a pro-MS article on this site - the only thing I'm dissapointed with is the number of troll statements posted in the comments.
And then yo did an extensve analysis of the article.
The problem is that the start of your comments were *cut off* well before the start of your commetary by the infamous line "Read the rest of this comment... ". In other words, what was visible was the most troll intensive portion of your article. This was very bad positioning for your comments, since some of them were mildly interesting. Probably such a post should be reorganized, and should have been saved for posting in reply to an appropriate article. Here it is best seen as a troll.
Now there is the matter of this bit:
Why would individuals encrypt their emails and other correspondence to each other? What is the rational explanation? The only reason I can see for day-to-day use of encryption is personal emails is that you have something to hide or you have a bad case of paranoia. No offence people - but what makes what you say so interesting that you are so concerned about other people reading it? If you are doing something illegal, or you are concerned about maintaining secrecy because other people may steal your original (and so far unpatented) ideas then maybe there is a point - but I have met some people who refuse to exchange email unless it is PGP encrypted - what's up with that?
Simply, PGP offers a way to ensure that the person sending you the email is the person they say they are. Not some one faking it.
The other issue is one of Privacy.
If you do not belive in privacy, then I can recommned a glass house for you.
After all, you are not doing anything illegal? And if all houses were made of glass we would be able to catch criminals alot easier. We could just watch them all of the time with TV cameras.
What are you doing that is so important that it would require secrecy and privacy 24 hours a day? You must have a criminal frame of mind, not wanting to live in a glass house.
This obsession with privacy is merely paranoia, y'know, and is easily fixed with one of several medications. Let us recommend a nice doctor who would be very willing to help you with medications.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I run NetBSD on three architectures at home. Some of my i386 boxes, my Sparc boxes, and my 68K Macintosh boxes. The same OS runs on all three architectures. It all builds out of the same source tarballs. The configuration files in /etc are identical. The same apps will build on all the boxes out of the NetBSD Packages collection.
There's a lot of merit in that for various reasons. I grew tired of every yahoo out there tweaking the config files for a certain other freenix and calling it a 'new distribution.' It gets old after awhile.
No special hardware required, apparently, with NetBsd, aside from the usual, like a computer. If you want proprietary hardware, you'll have to go to Microsoft, I guess
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I was once present in a bar in Cambridge where there was scheduled to be a BSD user's group meeting. I was not paying much attention as I was with a group of friends from work and we are all Windows developers. Besides, they looked scary. So about I would guess halfway through their meeting, in walks ESR a group of his Linux lackeys. Well naturally the BSD elitists begin teasing the Linux guys, who pretty much just blow it off. But then one of the Linux guys, who was a kernel developer, I forget his name, says something to the BSD devil chick. I didn't hear what because there was a live band and it was pretty loud, but you know it wasn't good. So one of the BSD guys (one of the scarier of the bunch.. and this was in the presence of ESR, and you know how scary he looks..) starts getting all up in the face of the Linux guy. Well the Linux guy poors his beer over the BSD guy's head. Well, shit. There were also some foreign grad students from MIT in there. So one of them, who is a Pokemon master, gives a Pokeball to one of the BSD guys. So he throws it down in the middle of the bar, and what do you know, it's a charmander. Now I've learned this the hard way but in case you didn't know: alcohol and fire do not mix well. So the charmander breathes fire all over the Linux guys, two of them are set on fire (they were working on USB support...that explains that) but the rest are fucking pissed now. So one of them takes a baseball bat of the wall and underhandedly swings at one of the BSD guy's legs. So he breaks his knees. This was a shame since he was an olympic swimmer. Too bad. So the BSD kernel guy got pushed over the edge, and starts beating the shit out of the Linux kernel guys. Finally he hits him so hard his teeth fly all over floor, and he begins kicking his head. He probably would have died except then ESR took out of gun and blew his head in 'twain right there.
The lesson here is, it is a good idea to have ESR on your side in a fight, because while he looks scary but not that scary, he does carry a gun and is freakin' crazy.
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"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
You have to get them at one of those bulk discount warehouse clubs.
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"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
Well it may suck, but from Wind River's perspective it wasn't something they wanted to bank roll. You cannot blame them for that.
Does it suck? As I said for slackware users it definitely does. Was it a surprise? No it was not.
this space for rent
How about LSDUserBSD
That actually makes sense, given that both BSD and LSD were developed at UC Berkeley.
--Why do dataBASEs have ACID properties?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Actually, it does help make such inroads, but it's as an embedded OS, not an "enterprise" OS. Even the NetBSD folks will admit they aren't really shooting for the latter. But porting to "video game consoles and scientific calculators" proves how versatile NetBSD is as an embedded platform.
Alphas are used in high-end embedded systems such as those used for industrial and medical imaging, since they still beat Pentiums two-to-one or better in the computations involved in such tasks. And to reach the useful memory and I/O bandwidth of recent Alpha systems, you have to use exotic chipsets with Pentiums, which can offset some or all of their price advantage.
Wind River's purchase of BSDi suggests an important trend for the BSD's into the embedded market, a market that is expected to exceed the enterprise market in value in the years to come. Given Linux's problems in this area (lack of an integrated userland and what is often perceived as a corporation-unfriendly license) the BSD's have a pretty good shot at becoming open-source solutions for embedded systems.
Where can i special order *BSD with 32 processor special hardware? Oh oops i can't.
:)
Oh, oops, clustering is more cost effective.
Disclaimer: I personally don't like clustering databases, so your point has some validity to it
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Quite true. The vast majority of boxes are still uniprocessor, and probably will be for awhile.
FreeBSD and Slowaris both have had solid multiprocessing support for awhile. Sun of course makes their biggest margins on the boxes with lots of chips, so they are biased that way. FreeBSD produced excellent SMP early on compared to Linux, but unfortunately it wasn't portable enough to help the other BSDs. (OpenBSD and NetBSD are smaller projects with goals aside from application compatibility and performance, so it's natural their SMP code is developing more slowly.) Linux 2.2 kernel had some trouble going past 4, and wasn't all that good even at 4 or below, but 2.4 does much better. Pre 2.0 kernels had no SMP at all, or only severly broken patches for it, IIRC. So if you tried it again today, you should have less trouble (as long as you handle a kernel upgrade.)
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
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but I've worked (in person) with core-level developers in both the netbsd and freebsd teams.
I used freebsd commercially at a high-end router company who makes its bread and butter living and patching freebsd.
and I've been lectured by those guys on how much more stable *bsd is over linux in terms of SMP and such.
so I probably do know more about it than you, mr. hissy fit.
I'm not sure what goal you had in mind when you flamed me, but I'd suggest you increase your medication; and you really shouldn't skip doses..
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
No, not quite true. FreeBSD supports multiprocessor x86 and has for awhile, NetBSD is rolling out SMP on x86, alpha, sparc, and ppc (see this post for links.
NetBSD took longer, because portable code that will support many platforms easily is their grail. Writing that type of code naturally takes more time.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.