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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."
And it makes for a good research project as well.
But I ask here, as an honest interested person, why one would wait until SMP is correctly and efficiently implemented into OpenBSD when they could simply use any old recent version of Windows or Linux on SMP hardware to get symmetric multiprocessor support for a high-load server?
I understand that Research -> Products -> Corporate $$$, but is this perhaps too little too late for OpenBSD?
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
It doesn't matter which CD set you buy, what's important is that the project gets the money.
You can always get the latest release by FTP.
So why don't you just buy the current release now.
-jfedor
I see tons of negativity from the clueless as usual. *sigh*
:P)
Hey, people? Do you know how many people *don't* need SMP, as opposed to those who do? Did you ever think that, given the number of SMP-supporting *nixes out there, OpenBSD felt like concentrating on more important things (like security) first?
Yeah.
Congrats, OpenBSD! (Still the only operating system to pit Daemonettes against Catgirls in pits of pudding! Hehehe. Get it? Daemonettes? Catgirls? Script Kitties? HEHEHEHEHE. Sorry.
Troll.
OpenBSD has had IPv6 since version 2.7 out in June 2000.
And for the record, FreeBSD has had IPv6 since March, 2000, version 4.0
And let's not forget who brought you OpenSSH.
SMP isn't the top priority. Giving up stability and security for the latest and greatest features are not what everyone wants. A friend of mine complained about FreeBSD not having good SMP support, I asked him if he had an SMP machine, he said "No." I hope that is enough to illustrate my point.
Sorry to go off on this, but mod the parent down if you mod me down please. People always trounce on any of the BSD's while praising Linux here.
Hear that? That's my karma in the toilet. Flush.
Yes, one(1!) remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years.
If Microsoft could boast with this they would spend the equivalent of a small country's GNP on letting you damned well know about it.
If Linux could boast with this then Microsoft wouldn't have that small country's GNP to spend, since everybody would be running Linux instead.
If you by "always behind" mean that Doom 3 can't be run on OBSD then yes, you are correct on that too.
OpenBSD was designed to be a secure server, even with default install. Adding SMP-support have never been a priority in part, I think, because of the inherent security issues that arise from such a implementation. I'm sure there are other reasons as well, none of them beeing that they never got around to implementing it.
So are we agreed then, OpenBSD is always behind, and unsecure?
I thought so. =)
"Education is a system of induced ignorance" / Noam Chomsky
Ok, I grant your comment is funny, but I'm a Linux user (and sympathizer :) who grew up on BSD, and it really pains me to think that any OS (Solaris, Linux, HP/UX, etc) needs to be viewed as a competitor to BSD rather than a fellow citizen in the realm of UNIX and UNIX-derived OSes.
Each has its niche, and while some of those niches wane over time (e.g. SCO, IRIX, DG/UX), others flourish (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris) and that's a good thing. They continue to flow into the containers that they define, rather than having to attack eachother as many products do.
Please take note that this announcement didn't come from OpenBSD.org. The guys doing it as just doing it as their own project (which is neat). One of the main reasons people enjoy OpenBSD is that it's code has been audited by Theo and his folks and prepared to be the most security oriented distro around.
http://www.remix.net/
It might. Even if Theo doesn't accept these patches, the patches will still be available. I just hope they keep maintaining them and keep them up to date if Theo says no for any reason.
OTOH, it may be that SMP code is more difficult to audit, and that this is the reason it won't make it in. Remember, SMP allows for the possibility of race conditions within the kernel itself, which would be a nightmare to validate for security.
If Theo would deny this work, it would probably be on those grounds. It was indeed one of the reasons he mentioned to me.
The most likely place for race conditions to occur on SMP systems is with threading. I have yet to see a totally solid threading implementation that is totally devoid of race conditions of any kind wrt locking/freeing/semaphores/etc. Usually kernel developers solve most of the problems by passing one big lock around (like linux does, and FreeBSD (ever heard of Giant?))
All in all good news that these guys are working on it indeed. My main concern is seeing this project die because it has the chance of being shot down by Theo. I really hope they persist in pushing Theo to accept it. I also hope they have a lot of patience while dealing with Theo, he's also not the easiest to get along with :)
There are some ego questions, Theo used to work on NetBSD. As smart as he is, and productive as he is, they found him abrasive and let him go. He hasn't changed much, and isn't likely to, and the world's a better place for having OpenBSD. From what I understand FreeBSD and NetBSD forked around the same time from the original BSD code, and 386/BSD. 386/BSD was kind of showing its rough edges, and people wnated to clean it up. FreeBSD went the x86 route, NetBSD always tried to be multiplatform.
/etc/rc startup, pioneered in NetBSD. A lot of the userland is the same, and there's some action on getting a standard ports system.
That said, there is a lot of code sharing. The USB core is exactly the same in both Net and Free, probably OpenBSD as well. systrace was originally slated for NetBSD, ended up in Open. 5.0 is getting a new
In some respects, there's more sharing in BSD than in some of the Linux distros. Since all the owners of the BSDs are essentially non-commercial, there's no real incentive to make proprietary stuff. In some situations, the BSD license is easier to share stuff, but it really doesn't in this case - if they were all GPL they could share things.
I understand what you're saying, that it diverts attention and resources. But you also have to realize they pick up thing as well. There's some cross pollination. I believe the SMP stuff is kind of taken from BSDi, if not the actual code then at least the general idea.
The other thing is "one-size fits all" gives you a huge XXXXL product. If all the things went into just one or the other, it would be pretty bloated. The focus of FreeBSD (optimized for Intel) is in respects incompatible with NetBSD (ultra-portability). Ask anyone who's worked on gcc about the problems of optimizing portable code.
I've yet to see a real-world business application with even a 25% speedup with the addition of a second processor. SMP is expensive and overrated for all but certain "embarassingly parallel" computational tasks.
I worked for an "internet incubator" that had huge farms of 8 and 4 way Compaq servers running MS-SQL Server 7. One CPU would be pegged at near 100%, while the other processors on the machine would be near idle. With Oracle, the situation was some better, but again less than 25% speedup for 2nd processor, and less than 25% of 25% for 3rd, etc.
Maybe YOU need to grow up, and actually test the benefits of SMP rather than coo and goo-goo over it like some shiny toy.
Pick ONE.
Different approaches, different world views. It's hard to tell which is better (and why) *after* it's been done, much less *before* it's been done.
I don't think the duplication of effort is all that wasteful. Image the state of Linux and FreeBSD security if OpenBSD did not exist.