-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Mon, 31 Aug 1998, Andrew Gillham wrote:

>As a "random user", I do not think that NetBSD has solid plans for SMP.
>I have *never* seen an official comment regarding SMP.  The only thing
>that I know is that certain people have mentioned "fully-funded" many
>times.  Also, making the kernel threadsafe has been mentioned, etc.
>
>If there really is a fully funded project for SMP, why is it not mentioned
>anywhere?  Personally I would love to have SMP for NetBSD, I will go
>out and buy an SMP motherboard as soon as alpha test code is available.
>But AFAIK, as a random user, it isn't happening.

Well, I don't know much about the formal plans for SMP under NetBSD, but
at Jason Thorpe's presentation on NetBSD at USENIX this year, he
mentioned the following points:

	* Work is fully under way to get SMP going under NetBSD.
	  presumably this is the `Well funded project' mentioned
	  above.

	* The current goal is to get a multi-threaded kernel going
	  first, and then allow scheduling of kernel and user
	  space threads across multiple processors.  Specific
	  mention was made of the fact that the FreeBSD project
	  took approximately the opposite approach, and is running
	  into trouble trying to integrate a multi-threaded kernel
	  into thir SMP work.

	* The NetBSD-2.0 version mark has been reserved for the first
	  formal release with a multi-threaded kernel and SMP.

Now I too would love to see SMP under NetBSD, but I agree with not
pulling a quick fix in as long as this is actively being worked on.

Looking at the Linux and FreeBSD worlds, where these type of temporary
sledgehammer solutions tend to end up sticking around a long time after
the real solution has been forgotten, I'm willing to wait for a well
designed solution.

``We will ship no code before its time''

- -- 
				Jim Wise
				jwise@unicast.com





-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use
Charset: noconv

iQEVAwUBNesO3xg+dMhCouwfAQHB/Qf6AsolmDDc1Zyx+wnbAHihraB4NTvq1jzq
cMenUbK7mgJRWg0DDF8xeTaMXerETqKRlgLD8J7HlozovY/+uR6mrZCbkFsDsAZs
gxqG4/OPf/WXIe20LMuQ4KW8OXPmOZn0C6e8omCTl0cg12BM0SyrLFLlMquQMciN
GooTouh/msaggZbm76DqceewERwsBpgC2P5IBxk24bB247+h3WbjfI4oFJm4zt7c
VTCbGoJyjGN3ml9wTkmRfUx3k8fDxfMXV5h+XUYgsFfuLKpVX4iJomI9YWOUeYI8
s4wfh7s8zEfaWaP6AGNKsvQR3vsz49P4gIEYoGHIV8U8UxFPcwU3LA==
=D9e+
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----