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OpenBSD SMP In The Works

Posted by timothy on from the open-as-in-sights dept.

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."

6 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. It's about friggin time they did... by CoolVibe · · Score: 5, Informative
    Although, the question remains if Theo will accept these patches...

    The last time I spoke to Theo in person, he wasn't too keen on SMP. That wasn't too long ago.

  2. Re:Great news by bahwi · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:The problem with OpenBSD.. by jfedor · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  4. A long wait... by evenprime · · Score: 5, Informative
    There's been talk of doing this since 1997. In the past there was concern about the cost of SMP hardware to develop on and also on the huge amount of time needed to do it right:
    SMP is a big deal. OpenBSD does things, and it does them RIGHT. To do SMP right, we'd need to make the kernel fully-reentrant. This means that we'd clean up the kernel I/O functions so that they don't wait on one another (that's a really dumbed-down, bad explanation of it.) By making the kernel re-entrant, we wouldn't have the problem of spinlocks (one processor waiting on the other to finish I/O, etc.) This would mean almost a COMPLETE re-write of the kernel. This would be a six+ month ordeal for quite a few coders working 40-60 hour weeks. Remember, such a huge task needs to include not only the re-writing of existing code, but checking it to make sure it works on all supported platforms without breaking all the great existing features of OpenBSD.
    That bit about doing things the Right Way is a major consideration for the OpenBSD team. In 1998 jkatz pointed out that they probably wouldn't just use the code from another BSD because they wanted to make sure that OpenBSD's solution was more scaleable.
    --

    "Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
    I think that goes for OS's too
  5. Re:Not to be trollish.... by Tuzanor · · Score: 5, Informative
    Its OpenBSD that has "taken so long". FreeBSD has had SMP for ages now, and until very recently it better scaled than linux's. Keep in mind that NetBSD and FreeBSD forked in the early ninties and both had different priorities. FreeBSD became a stable high performance platform. It only ran on x86 (now alpha, soon to be Ultrasparc and Itanium). They eventually added SMP with other various features.

    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.

  6. Re:Note: Announcement Not From OpenBSD.org by ISWalker · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.