On 2015.08.31, Quartz wrote: > For an OpenBSD machine acting as a gateway/firewall/router with a handful of > related tasks (pf, dhcp server, etc) would mp yield anything?
are we talking home router here or something more specialized? there is not really any *negative* to mp besides maybe cost/power consumption. the use of multi core vs single core is going to come down to your specific needs and expected use/load for the machine. ex: my home router is an intel atom d2550(dual core/ht 1.8ghz) gbe running pf, ntpd, dns, dhcpd and wifi for ~12 machines and doesnt break a sweat. my rig spends most of its time scaled down to 224mhz. this is fine. i don't loose anything by using a mp system and i woudn't gain any more performance with a single core machine. now if i needed a gateway/firewall for say 50 machines it would be different. dns, ntp, dhcp would all be moved to other machines on the network and a faster single core cpu would be preferable. after all its only job is to route packets as fast as it can. if your need is high performance routing go single core. if you need something more general purpose go multi core. if you want to future proof for smp pf go multi core.
