the future of sun4v

2008-08-21 Thread Kip Macy
I apologise for cross-posting.

I believe that there is a general expectation by freebsd users and
developers that unsupported code should not be in CVS. Although sun4v
is a very interesting platform for developers doing SMP work, I simply
do not have the time or energy to maintain it. If someone else would
like to step up and try his hand I would be supportive of his efforts.
In the likely event that no one steps forward by the time that 7.1 is
released I will ask that it be moved to the Attic.

Thanks,
Kip
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Re: the future of sun4v

2008-08-22 Thread Peter Jeremy
[Replies re-directed to freebsd-sun4v]

On 2008-Aug-21 14:42:55 -0700, Kip Macy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I believe that there is a general expectation by freebsd users and
>developers that unsupported code should not be in CVS. Although sun4v
>is a very interesting platform for developers doing SMP work, I simply
>do not have the time or energy to maintain it. If someone else would
>like to step up and try his hand I would be supportive of his efforts.
>In the likely event that no one steps forward by the time that 7.1 is
>released I will ask that it be moved to the Attic.

Since there are no other current SPARC CPUs that FreeBSD can run on
(the US-II has been obsolete for about 6 years and FreeBSD won't run
on any more recent sun4u chips), that will also remove the
justification for maintaining a SPARC64 port.

I don't have the knowledge or available time to maintain the sun4v
port by myself but would be happy to be part of a team doing so.  One
impediment I have is that I don't have a T-1 or T-2 system that I can
dedicate to FreeBSD.  I could work on FreeBSD in a guest domain - but
since FreeBSD doesn't support either the virtual disk or virtual
network, actually getting FreeBSD running there presents somewhat of a
challenge.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
Please excuse any delays as the result of my ISP's inability to implement
an MTA that is either RFC2821-compliant or matches their claimed behaviour.


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Re: the future of sun4v

2008-08-22 Thread Kris Kennaway

Peter Jeremy wrote:

[Replies re-directed to freebsd-sun4v]

On 2008-Aug-21 14:42:55 -0700, Kip Macy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I believe that there is a general expectation by freebsd users and
developers that unsupported code should not be in CVS. Although sun4v
is a very interesting platform for developers doing SMP work, I simply
do not have the time or energy to maintain it. If someone else would
like to step up and try his hand I would be supportive of his efforts.
In the likely event that no one steps forward by the time that 7.1 is
released I will ask that it be moved to the Attic.


Since there are no other current SPARC CPUs that FreeBSD can run on
(the US-II has been obsolete for about 6 years and FreeBSD won't run
on any more recent sun4u chips), that will also remove the
justification for maintaining a SPARC64 port.

I don't have the knowledge or available time to maintain the sun4v
port by myself but would be happy to be part of a team doing so.  One
impediment I have is that I don't have a T-1 or T-2 system that I can
dedicate to FreeBSD.  I could work on FreeBSD in a guest domain - but
since FreeBSD doesn't support either the virtual disk or virtual
network, actually getting FreeBSD running there presents somewhat of a
challenge.



There are two t1000 systems in the freebsd.org cluster that are 
available for people to work on.  Rink Springer has also expressed 
interest in this.


Perhaps Kip can explain some more about what things he looked at, but 
the most serious bugs might be in pmap or perhaps trap handling. 
Operationally, things like buildworld -jN die quickly with random 
signals, kernel traps, etc.


Kris

P.S. It looks like marius has made progress on US III but sun4u is still 
an architectural dead end.

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Re: the future of sun4v

2008-08-22 Thread Marcel Moolenaar


On Aug 22, 2008, at 4:33 AM, Peter Jeremy wrote:


[Replies re-directed to freebsd-sun4v]

On 2008-Aug-21 14:42:55 -0700, Kip Macy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I believe that there is a general expectation by freebsd users and
developers that unsupported code should not be in CVS. Although sun4v
is a very interesting platform for developers doing SMP work, I  
simply

do not have the time or energy to maintain it. If someone else would
like to step up and try his hand I would be supportive of his  
efforts.

In the likely event that no one steps forward by the time that 7.1 is
released I will ask that it be moved to the Attic.


Since there are no other current SPARC CPUs that FreeBSD can run on
(the US-II has been obsolete for about 6 years and FreeBSD won't run
on any more recent sun4u chips), that will also remove the
justification for maintaining a SPARC64 port.


Marius has been doing some great work towards US-III support.
I have FreeBSD/sparc64 running on Netra SMP with US-III CPUs.

While the code is not in SVN, It's in Perforce and from what
I can see, it's in a very good shape.

FYI,

--
Marcel Moolenaar
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



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Re: the future of sun4v

2008-08-22 Thread Marius Strobl
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 01:44:25PM +0200, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> Peter Jeremy wrote:
> >[Replies re-directed to freebsd-sun4v]
> >
> >On 2008-Aug-21 14:42:55 -0700, Kip Macy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>I believe that there is a general expectation by freebsd users and
> >>developers that unsupported code should not be in CVS. Although sun4v
> >>is a very interesting platform for developers doing SMP work, I simply
> >>do not have the time or energy to maintain it. If someone else would
> >>like to step up and try his hand I would be supportive of his efforts.
> >>In the likely event that no one steps forward by the time that 7.1 is
> >>released I will ask that it be moved to the Attic.
> >
> >Since there are no other current SPARC CPUs that FreeBSD can run on
> >(the US-II has been obsolete for about 6 years and FreeBSD won't run
> >on any more recent sun4u chips), that will also remove the
> >justification for maintaining a SPARC64 port.
> >
> >I don't have the knowledge or available time to maintain the sun4v
> >port by myself but would be happy to be part of a team doing so.  One
> >impediment I have is that I don't have a T-1 or T-2 system that I can
> >dedicate to FreeBSD.  I could work on FreeBSD in a guest domain - but
> >since FreeBSD doesn't support either the virtual disk or virtual
> >network, actually getting FreeBSD running there presents somewhat of a
> >challenge.
> >
> 
> There are two t1000 systems in the freebsd.org cluster that are 
> available for people to work on.  Rink Springer has also expressed 
> interest in this.
> 
> Perhaps Kip can explain some more about what things he looked at, but 
> the most serious bugs might be in pmap or perhaps trap handling. 
> Operationally, things like buildworld -jN die quickly with random 
> signals, kernel traps, etc.
> 
> Kris
> 
> P.S. It looks like marius has made progress on US III but sun4u is still 
> an architectural dead end.

Well, let's see what architecture the upcoming Rock CPUs are;
judging their feature list they appear to be a continuation of
the Fujitsu sun4u line rather than a successor of UST1/2 :)

Marius

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Re: the future of sun4v

2008-08-22 Thread Kip Macy
> Well, let's see what architecture the upcoming Rock CPUs are;
> judging their feature list they appear to be a continuation of
> the Fujitsu sun4u line rather than a successor of UST1/2 :)

That is not what I've heard.

-Kip
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Re: the future of sun4v

2008-09-08 Thread Darren Reed

Marius Strobl wrote:

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 01:44:25PM +0200, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> Peter Jeremy wrote:
> >[Replies re-directed to freebsd-sun4v]
> >
> >On 2008-Aug-21 14:42:55 -0700, Kip Macy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>I believe that there is a general expectation by freebsd users and
> >>developers that unsupported code should not be in CVS. Although sun4v
> >>is a very interesting platform for developers doing SMP work, I simply
> >>do not have the time or energy to maintain it. If someone else would
> >>like to step up and try his hand I would be supportive of his efforts.
> >>In the likely event that no one steps forward by the time that 7.1 is
> >>released I will ask that it be moved to the Attic.
> >
> >Since there are no other current SPARC CPUs that FreeBSD can run on
> >(the US-II has been obsolete for about 6 years and FreeBSD won't run
> >on any more recent sun4u chips), that will also remove the
> >justification for maintaining a SPARC64 port.
> >
> >I don't have the knowledge or available time to maintain the sun4v
> >port by myself but would be happy to be part of a team doing so.  One
> >impediment I have is that I don't have a T-1 or T-2 system that I can
> >dedicate to FreeBSD.  I could work on FreeBSD in a guest domain - but
> >since FreeBSD doesn't support either the virtual disk or virtual
> >network, actually getting FreeBSD running there presents somewhat of a
> >challenge.
> >
> 
> There are two t1000 systems in the freebsd.org cluster that are 
> available for people to work on.  Rink Springer has also expressed 
> interest in this.
> 
> Perhaps Kip can explain some more about what things he looked at, but 
> the most serious bugs might be in pmap or perhaps trap handling. 
> Operationally, things like buildworld -jN die quickly with random 
> signals, kernel traps, etc.
> 
> Kris
> 
> P.S. It looks like marius has made progress on US III but sun4u is still 
> an architectural dead end.


Well, let's see what architecture the upcoming Rock CPUs are;
judging their feature list they appear to be a continuation of
the Fujitsu sun4u line rather than a successor of UST1/2 :)
  


That's inaccurate. Rock is meant to be very compatible with
sun4v, although I don't know if uname will say "sun4v" or
something else...but you will need a bug-free sun4v operating
system to run them (which is to say that various bugs in the
solaris sun4v support needed to get fixed rather than left...)

The critical issue for freebsd (and any operating system for
that matter) on rock is how well does the kernel scale to a
system with that many concurrent threads?

Darren

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Re: the future of sun4v

2008-09-08 Thread Peter Jeremy
[cc list trimmed]

On 2008-Sep-08 01:14:39 -0700, Darren Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>The critical issue for freebsd (and any operating system for
>that matter) on rock is how well does the kernel scale to a
>system with that many concurrent threads?

Right now it doesn't.  And based on some previous threads, there is a
lot of redesign to do before it can.  But stability needs to come
before scalability.  There's no point in FreeBSD pretending it can
support some arbitrary number of CPUs when it panics due to races
in one of the CPU subsystems - which is my understanding of the
current sun4v state.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
Please excuse any delays as the result of my ISP's inability to implement
an MTA that is either RFC2821-compliant or matches their claimed behaviour.


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