From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265489AbTLHQJU (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Dec 2003 11:09:20 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265494AbTLHQJU (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Dec 2003 11:09:20 -0500 Received: from tmr-02.dsl.thebiz.net ([216.238.38.204]:51205 "EHLO gatekeeper.tmr.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265489AbTLHQJN (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Dec 2003 11:09:13 -0500 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Path: gatekeeper.tmr.com!davidsen From: davidsen@tmr.com (bill davidsen) Newsgroups: mail.linux-kernel Subject: Re: SMP broken on Dell PowerEdge 4100/200 under 2.6.0-testxx? Date: 8 Dec 2003 15:57:54 GMT Organization: TMR Associates, Schenectady NY Message-ID: References: <20031206024251.GG8039@holomorphy.com> <20031206050908.GL8039@holomorphy.com> <1070687655.1166.6.camel@chevrolet.hybel> <20031206054031.GM8039@holomorphy.com> X-Trace: gatekeeper.tmr.com 1070899074 15674 192.168.12.62 (8 Dec 2003 15:57:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@tmr.com Originator: davidsen@gatekeeper.tmr.com Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In article <20031206054031.GM8039@holomorphy.com>, William Lee Irwin III wrote: | The real problem with all this is that it was arranged around minimal | impact code changes instead of adequately describing hardware, and so | it gives rise to numerous corner cases and is generally brittle. Of | course, 2.6 is too frozen to do anything with it now, and ia32 will | likely be largely legacy during the course of 2.7, so the damage will | probably be permanent. I don't follow your thinking here, 2.6.0 is certainly frozen, but I see no reason this can't be fixed in 2.6 if someone cares to do so. The amount of code is small, and as long as the interrupt gets serviced by exactly one CPU I doubt the performance could get worse. I don't see ia32 going away, either, unless you see 2.7 in a more distant timeframe than I do. Looking at the power issue I predict significant ia32 in laptops, and due to cost issues in desktops and servers. Also, I suspect that Linux hackers have a much higher percentage of SMP ia32 machines than the general public, which encourages enhancements in that area. -- bill davidsen CTO, TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.