Re: [Sheflug] RAID and kernel upgrading.

[Alex Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, Will Newton wrote:

> > Hmmm. John Carmack coded an SMP Quake at one point, and while it was
> > probably quite a noddy version he reckoned it gave 10% improvement. Here,
> Games, esp. Quake style do not tend to work very well with SMP.

Yes, I think I explained that ;)

> usage. Maybe something cool could be done when AI becomes a serious
> consideration, but that won't be for a while yet. :)

AI doesn't need much processor power at all. Usually, it's not the
processor that's a factor in game development anyway - the processor is
*never* the bottleneck.

> > ;). Certainly, SMP is an interesting system (race conditions, deadlock,
> > atomic actions, all real Djikstra stuff ;)
> If done properly it should make for a really nippy, responsive
> system.

So should a UP 500MHz system, SMP doesn't gain you anything in terms of
performance. It's just CPU RAID.....

> Never really been tempted though. I might try one of those dual
> celeron boards if I ever win the lottery...

I was almost tempted a while ago. Someone had a dual mobo & cpus going for
around 250, which is a very good price for what they were selling. Knowing
how the IO system works on i486 architecture, though, it's a bit of a
waste, because the buses just can't handle it..

> > Look at it. Use it. If it feels faster, all is good. ;)
> Either that or you just wish it felt faster cause you spent 700 qiud on
> it. :)

;)

> I don't like it too much TBH. It breaks a LOT of things, so you have to
> run devfsd for compatability, so devfs is off on my box and will remain so
> till I'm convinced it will actually do something for me.
> AFAIK it defaults to off. But then it is a dev. kernel. :)

I think in most distros it will be on, though. Too much stuff works in
nasty ways without it. But, there will be a lot of changes in 2.4 which
are going to require people re-learning bits of linux. When people find
out they've knacked a floppy 'cos they unmounted it only once after
mounting it twice, they'll perhaps realise there's a reason for different
version numbers ;)

Cheers,

Alex.


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