Scalability of FreeBSD

[Jonathan Belson]

Hiya


> before i go ahead and stick linux (bleh) on this 8-way xeon, can anyone
> comment on how well freebsd would scale in comparison?  i hear that
> freebsd's smp code isn't exactly wonderful (although i know major

AIUI the is still a global kernal lock, which means that only one process
can be in the kernel at a time - further calls are locked out until the
first
call has returned.  Work is ongoing in this area though [1]

I guess it depends on what applications you're running...if they use
pthreads/rfork to spawn worker threads, you'll notice a bigger
difference than if your apps are single-threaded.

Although I have a dual P2 with an SMP kernel, I haven't
really experimented enough to find out how much performance
improvement it gives me.

Wasn't improved SMP to be one of the fruits of the FreeBSD/BSDi
cross-pollination?

> improvements are being worked on), and i'd prefer to avoid linux where
> possible....

Back when I used Linux, (2.0.36-ish days) it pretty much the same level
of SMP support has FreeBSD has now; recent kernels have greatly
improved SMP support though still not on par with Solaris.


[1] I only use -RELEASE, I'm sure someone with more knowledge in
this area will be able to fill you in.

--
C-YA
Jon

http://www.dookie.demon.co.uk