No SMP? Huh?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0, Insightful
Uhh, am I the only one here who was completely unaware that OpenBSD didn't have SMP support?
I guess I've been stuck in the Linux world too long. I never would have guessed this. I haven't been running a single-processor system, workstation or server, since 1998.
The bigger news here, for me, is that Linux just jumped way up on my totem pole of respect.
Re:No SMP? Huh?
by
jellomizer
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Well OpenBSD has a different set of priorities then Linux. OpenBSD philosophy is to do it and do it well make absolutely sure that it is secure. This strong focus on security slows down a lot of development and thus keeping OpenBSD from the leading edge of technology. Now that a lot of SMP technology has matured and proven its worth it is now time for an OpenBSD implementation. Being on the leading edge is nice. But when you have a solution that must absolutely has to be running and secure there is no shame on being a little behind the times in technology.
-- If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Multiple Niches
by
Mark_MF-WN
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Yeah, the whole BSD vs Linux conflict is ridiculous. There are a lot of niches out there in the software world, and Linux can't fill them ALL. Linux is nice on the desktop, handheld, and cluster, but the BSDs seem well suited for firewalls, routers, and other kinds of always-on equipment. OpenBSD in particular seems useful for bastion hosts, because of its rock-solid security. And of course, we still need Windows for hardcore gaming.
The point? Niches -- there are a bunch of them. Although I'm a loyal Linux user, I love the OpenBSD project. It contributes a great deal of useful software and bugfixes that help the whole community.
Re:No SMP? Huh?
by
Tranzig
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The bigger news here, for me, is that Linux just jumped way up on my totem pole of respect.
I wonder where Windows NT is on your totem pole, because it had SMP support years before Linux 2.0. And ACPI support and journalizing filesystem support and modules (drivers) support and so on... I know I will be modded down for such blasphemy.
Anyways OpenBSD has (at least had last year) scalability issues, it scales pretty bad, and it needs to be solved ot get SMP really effective.
Faulty Assumption?
by
SteveM
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· Score: 4, Insightful
They really need to stop assuming everyone who reads/. knows it all.
They don't assume you know it all. They do assume you are smart enough to do some research and find info on stuff you don't understand.
How hard is it to google "SMP"?
SteveM
OpenBSD commands respect...
by
emil
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· Score: 5, Insightful
...quite easily. Examine Red Hat's errata list for AS3, then look at OpenBSD's errata. I assume that you will see a rather conspicuous difference in the quantity of changes?
Granted, this list is not entirely fair, as many ports and packages have bug fixes, which would push up OpenBSD's count. However, OpenBSD includes a great deal in the base distribution (SSH, Apache, Sendmail, etc.) that comprises what they assert to be audited, secure code.
To me, the ability to deploy a server and then spend minimal effort with security patches is more important than SMP. YMMV.
FreeBSD The most powerful x86 open source Unix
OpenBSD The most secure open source Unix available
NetBSD The most portable open source Unix available
Linux The most popular open source Unix
OpenBSD needs SMP
by
Sloppy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm glad they're doing this. I know OpenBSD's focus isn't performance, but the day is coming when all personal computers will be multiprocessor. Not because people will actually put two chips on all their motherboards, but because of dual-core chips. Dual-core is such a great idea that pays off with so much performance per area-of-silicon, that eventually [speculation follows] economy-of-scale is going to make single-core chips an endangered species. Maybe you'll still be able to get a single-core x86 chip from Via or Transmeta or someone, but I bet AMD and Intel will stop making them altogether.
So OpenBSD faces a situation where people are going to be running their OS on SMP-capable hardware, even when the user may not necessarily highly value SMP. The user will have SMP simply because the $100 chip he bought, is dual core. All of OpenBSD's competitors will be able to take advantage of this, so OpenBSD's performance would be so far behind, that even if performance isn't the focus, it'll look just plain wasteful and backward.
All developers who makes OSes that run on commodity hardware, need to wake up and deal with SMP, because in a few years, everyone is going to want it, rather than just the speed freaks.
-- As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hmm, that may be true for Google since they generally don't have to keep state. When you have to keep track of sessions and need a substantial amount of sharing between your server instances as a result, a cluster of dual cpu machines or even quad cpu machines may turn out to perform a lot better.
At any rate, if your goal is to handle lots and lots of relatively independent queries, then yeah, large clusters of relatively small machines do a very good job.
Re:Not so fast...
by
evilviper
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· Score: 2, Insightful
OpenBSD went through a comparable architecture change when they swapped virtual memory systems a few years ago, and several subsequent major releases of OpenBSD had serious VM stability problems
I was using OpenBSD at the time, and never had the problems myself. I wasn't following the mailing lists, so I didn't even know there were serious problems.
So, is there some mitigating factor here that would convince anyone who was paying attention to deploy a mission-critical system on SMP OpenBSD in 2004?
Yes. Their track record. If it's not stable about a month before the release, expect it to be disabled and/or removed. If it is reasonably stable, it's going to go through a couple weeks of nothing but bug testing and fixing before it's released. OpenBSD releases are nothing like Linux releases, you aren't going to have to download the new version a day later because there's a show-stopping bug in the version they just released...
That said, even though they are putting in SMP support, I wouldn't recomend switching soon. Even if it is stable and secure, don't expect performance to be mind-boggling for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhh, am I the only one here who was completely unaware that OpenBSD didn't have SMP support?
I guess I've been stuck in the Linux world too long. I never would have guessed this. I haven't been running a single-processor system, workstation or server, since 1998.
The bigger news here, for me, is that Linux just jumped way up on my totem pole of respect.
Well OpenBSD has a different set of priorities then Linux. OpenBSD philosophy is to do it and do it well make absolutely sure that it is secure. This strong focus on security slows down a lot of development and thus keeping OpenBSD from the leading edge of technology. Now that a lot of SMP technology has matured and proven its worth it is now time for an OpenBSD implementation. Being on the leading edge is nice. But when you have a solution that must absolutely has to be running and secure there is no shame on being a little behind the times in technology.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The point? Niches -- there are a bunch of them. Although I'm a loyal Linux user, I love the OpenBSD project. It contributes a great deal of useful software and bugfixes that help the whole community.
The bigger news here, for me, is that Linux just jumped way up on my totem pole of respect.
I wonder where Windows NT is on your totem pole, because it had SMP support years before Linux 2.0. And ACPI support and journalizing filesystem support and modules (drivers) support and so on...
I know I will be modded down for such blasphemy.
Anyways OpenBSD has (at least had last year) scalability issues, it scales pretty bad, and it needs to be solved ot get SMP really effective.
They really need to stop assuming everyone who reads /. knows it all.
They don't assume you know it all. They do assume you are smart enough to do some research and find info on stuff you don't understand.
How hard is it to google "SMP"?
SteveM
...quite easily. Examine Red Hat's errata list for AS3, then look at OpenBSD's errata. I assume that you will see a rather conspicuous difference in the quantity of changes?
Granted, this list is not entirely fair, as many ports and packages have bug fixes, which would push up OpenBSD's count. However, OpenBSD includes a great deal in the base distribution (SSH, Apache, Sendmail, etc.) that comprises what they assert to be audited, secure code.
To me, the ability to deploy a server and then spend minimal effort with security patches is more important than SMP. YMMV.
Read the soekris website, it puts it nicely:
FreeBSD The most powerful x86 open source Unix OpenBSD The most secure open source Unix available NetBSD The most portable open source Unix available Linux The most popular open source Unix
So OpenBSD faces a situation where people are going to be running their OS on SMP-capable hardware, even when the user may not necessarily highly value SMP. The user will have SMP simply because the $100 chip he bought, is dual core. All of OpenBSD's competitors will be able to take advantage of this, so OpenBSD's performance would be so far behind, that even if performance isn't the focus, it'll look just plain wasteful and backward.
All developers who makes OSes that run on commodity hardware, need to wake up and deal with SMP, because in a few years, everyone is going to want it, rather than just the speed freaks.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hmm, that may be true for Google since they generally don't have to keep state. When you have to keep track of sessions and need a substantial amount of sharing between your server instances as a result, a cluster of dual cpu machines or even quad cpu machines may turn out to perform a lot better.
At any rate, if your goal is to handle lots and lots of relatively independent queries, then yeah, large clusters of relatively small machines do a very good job.
I was using OpenBSD at the time, and never had the problems myself. I wasn't following the mailing lists, so I didn't even know there were serious problems.
Yes. Their track record. If it's not stable about a month before the release, expect it to be disabled and/or removed. If it is reasonably stable, it's going to go through a couple weeks of nothing but bug testing and fixing before it's released. OpenBSD releases are nothing like Linux releases, you aren't going to have to download the new version a day later because there's a show-stopping bug in the version they just released...
That said, even though they are putting in SMP support, I wouldn't recomend switching soon. Even if it is stable and secure, don't expect performance to be mind-boggling for a while.
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