Re: OFFTOPIC: Regarding NT vs Linux

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Mon, 22 Sep 1997 08:39:01 +0100 (BST)

> I'd be wary of relying on dual CPU systems with SMP for improved networking.
> As a simple test I ran top in an xterm window (displayed on another box, over
> the network) with a delay of 0. There were quite a few messages about
> interrupts being missed, etc, although these appear to be network card
> driver specific.

The 8390 driver problem ?

> For example, if I'm running crack (just one instance) on a dual CPU
> box that does NFS serving, you would at least expect there to be little
> or no difference in NFS speed.

The NFS server (unfsd) is single threaded. That means it just sits on a CPU
and doesn't help at all with NFS.

> Until Linux has kernel threads, I can't see it being hugely faster for
> NFS with dual CPU vs one CPU in server configurations where its CPU isn't
> used a lot.

Linux has kernel threads. It has a bit too much locking between them,
although a fair chunk of that vanished in 2.1 and more will vanish soon.