Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

13 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 5, Funny

    In related news, the Egyptians are on the cusp of discovering Construction, which will allow them to build Aqueduct and Coliseum. However, this is not expected to improve the odds of their feared Chariot against invading Mechanized Infantry.

    1. Re:Wow! by ajs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. Re:The problem with OpenBSD.. by jfedor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  5. 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

  6. XP and Linux comparisons are pointless by flinxmeister · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been using OpenBSD in several mission critical networking roles for 3 years now, and I can safely say that I haven't needed SMP.

    The conventional wisdom that an operating system should be judged according to it's bells and whistles is what's wrong with the software industry. An OS should be judged by two things: Does it do the job I require of it, and does it do it well?

    There are many many jobs that do not require SMP. There are many many jobs being done on SMP boxes that do not require SMP. As the price of processors has diminished, SMP is just a cool thing to buy. I'd be willing to put money down saying that 75% of the SMP boxes out there aren't needed (if that was measurable).

    So, if you want to judge your OS based on features you don't need, then go for it. I use OpenBSD because it is the best choice for that particular need. If you want to assume that one OS is the Uber-OS because of the back panel of the box, then go for it. I'll assume a particular OS is best for the task at hand, and go with that.

    I'm not part of the OpenBSD project (nor do I play one on TV), but one of the central points behind it is that they don't put in things unless they are needed. So far it doesn't seem like SMP has been justified in the great scheme of things (no surprise given the actual need in the wild). I'd much rather have them working on things I'm going to be using instead of evaluating other products based on things I won't.

  7. Re:Great news by jfedor · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years!"

    What puzzles me is how they jumped from "nearly 6 years" to "more than 7 years" in less than a year. :)

    -jfedor

  8. 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
  9. Re:Great news by joib · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd say the main reason for Linux development continuing rapidly despite the economy is that the Linux market is orders of magnitude larger than the *BSD market, so the distro makers (and other companies who employ Linux kernel hackers) have the money to keep Linux kernel hackers employed.

  10. This would be nice by QuietRiot · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm curious how much of a rework will be required [by the OpenBSD core developers] once these guys are done. 4 guys on a one-year project. SMP. Good luck. Will this be a patch-type thing? Will the core team accept it, or reject it outright? Will the core team use some portion of it - cleaning it up along the way, or will it take a major rewrite?

    It's strange how things like this end up changing would would have been. Do it right the first time, because if it gets adopted, and it wasn't done right, efforts will be diluted.

    I'm glad to see it's happening though. At least somebody's throwing some brainpower at it rather than waiting around for Theo & friends. (no fault to Theo, I know SMP is "in the works" - OpenBSD is secure, first and foremost. That's what I, and many others, care about most. Kudos to you and your team on this! You have a highly-regarded, ultra secure OS that has kept many cracker-types and script-kiddies at bay for many years. You have saved many people many thousands or millions of dollars with the protection your software project has provided. You have given nothing to the headache medicine providers of the IT industry.)

    One more processor for my dual-capable Sun SS20 and I'll have a grand-ole time playing with this. Just too bad it comes with only a single 10-speed ethernet port. Anybody know about S-bus fast ethernet cards?

    To these brave deveopers: Way to go! Thanks for getting the ball rolling and best of luck with your project (and dealing with the publicity! :)

  11. 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.

  12. 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.