NetBSD-Current Gets SMP

MobyTurbo writes "NetBSD-current for the i386 architecture now has SMP. (It used to be that only FreeBSD had this feature among the free BSDs.) See the announcement on the current-users mailing list."

Comments

Port to OpenBSD soon perhaps?

[moonboy]

I wonder if this means OpenBSD will soon have SMP capability? Anyone have any thoughts? Inside information?

Re:yawn

[OrangeSpyderMan]

call me crazy

Ok, crazy guy. :-)

I'll bite. I am currently running two SMP machines. Ok, one is for a DB server. Leave that one out of the question, it is actually underpowered for much of what it does, alas. I'm saving my pennies. The other however is my main desktop. It is not unecessarily powerful (2xPIII 600EB) compared to todays desktops systems, on the contrary, but I would never swap it for a single 1.2GHz (or even higher - a 2.8 P4 might get me thinking :-) ).

The reason is simple. On my desktop I frequently have a number of concurrent processes running (Mozilla, compile, ogg player, a few ssh sessions and I might even fire up a game from time to time while I'm waiting for a compile to finish...). This kind of use shows what a boost "low-end" SMP can be - the system remains perfectly responsive way past loads that would have a similar "horse-power" single CPU system groaning - and that is very important for interactive desktop use. My box at the office is a single PIII 1 GHz, which should, on paper, hold its own quite well. It feels markedly more sluggish for desktop use.

SMP systems are little more prone to "pissing competition" type purchases than say, GeForces and P4. I don't know many people who can actually use all the horsepower of modern systems on the desktop, be it under *BSD or Linux. As someone once said, todays desktops just "wait faster". At the moment at least I'd take a lesser CPU 2-way SMP system over a more powerful single CPU for my desktop anyday.