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OpenBSD SMP In The Works
Cajal writes "Four students at the University of Waterloo are working to add SMP support to OpenBSD as part of the Spinlocks project. More information is available in a story
at the OpenBSD Journal's site. They expect to have an initial working MP kernel in January."
The last time I spoke to Theo in person, he wasn't too keen on SMP. That wasn't too long ago.
Because OpenBSD is about security, not the lastest and greatest features. Linux is about the latest and greatest features. Since the economy went south, most of the peopl working on any of the BSD's lost their jobs or were unable to continue working on the BSD's during corporate time. Where the BSD's have corporate backing and private backing, Linux is mostly private backing, i.e. people at home working on it. Again, things are changing, but everyone has their preferences. No one is going to simply give up OpenBSD to go to Linux, if they need SMP, that is the best route. But from OpenBSD's web page:
"Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years!"
So they all have their uses, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. =) Live together, work together, don't kill each other.
They have ipv6. OpenBSD ships with ipv6 active and operating. They've been looking at/working on SMP for some time, but they (read: Theo) wants to make sure it meets the standards of the rest of the OS. SMP adds quite a few (theoretically at least) security problems to deal with, and they want to be sure those problems are fully addressed.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Isn't it the OpenBSD folks who are telling people not to make ISOs because the codebase changes frequently enough?
No.
Perhaps you are confused by this.
Why would you purchase a set of discs to perform multiple installs when OpenBSD developers recommend against using a static copy?
They don't. OpenBSD releases come at regular 6 months intervals (3.2 was a month early). That's what you should be using. You can use the snapshots or even the current CVS if you feel brave.
Sure, I can understand buying copies to support OpenBSD. I buy Redhat for the same reason, it's more principle than the actual material in the box.
You are correct. There's a slight difference, though, OpenBSD is not trying to turn a profit, just cover the development costs.
-jfedor
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Which apparently you don't.
the versions of OpenBSD with SMP support will require a Windows XP activation key...
Or maybe they figured out a way to port OpenBSd to Windows. Or something. Waterloo?
I assume you're referring to the stories from several months ago about a proposed deal where UW's Computer and Electrical Engineering department would, as part of a larger research sponsorship deal with MS, agree to make C# the language used in a first year class for CompEng students. There was a huge outcry against this by most CS and CompEng students and profs. Also, note that the School of Computer Science, in the Faculty of Mathematics, had nothing to do with this deal.
It is my impression that there are many UW students who use or contribute to Open Source projects. Profs are more than willing to make an occasional joke in class at Microsoft's expense. And most CS students (I can't speak for CompEngers) don't touch any MS products for programming projects past first year, by far preferring to use the provided unix labs.
Do I think the CompEng department's decision regarding C# bad? Very much so. But as I understand it, this decision was made by a few key people who stretched their authority, when really they should have consulted with more people. In fact, Engineering profs have called UW administration on this decision, leading to a decision that before the MS deal can be finalized, it must be approved by "the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Program Committee, Faculty of Engineering Admissions Committee, Faculty of Engineering Academic Committee, Faculty of Engineering Undergraduate Studies Committee, Year 1 Implementation Committee, Senate Undergraduate Council, UW Registrar's Office and the senate as required by UW policy and practice." This, in my opinion, effectively has killed the deal. See this article for more about this. [Note that the article implies that the proposed MS C# deal would have affected all first year programming classes. This is untrue: only first year CompEng classes would have been affected; CS students would have been fine.]
The very reason that this decision was such as big deal at UW is that it goes so very much against the prevalent attitude there. And the very large amount of negative feedback they got from UW students and profs in the CompEng and CS departments should ensure that something like this doesn't happen again at UW.
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
NetBSD was more focused on portability. They were aimed at the embeded market (which Wasabi systems is in business in) where there isn't SMP. When Theo forked OpenBSD off of NetBSD they still didn't have it and it still wasn't a priority. Now there is more interest in it, especially now that SMP hardware is becoming so cheap.
Anyway anything that is relatively (or entirely) cpu-bound and involves lots of processes or threads will be sped up significantly. Also one process doesn't tend to monopolize your processor so badly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Finally someone who is correct. I'm one of the students working on this. It is our computer engineering project. The plan is to have it somewhat working by January. We decided to this because we needed an idea for project and we thought it would be fun and allow us to learn a lot in the process. When the project is complete, we plan to release the code we have and if OpenBSD wants to use it he can, however, that wasn't necessarily the original intent.