Sure, they set the record of 4096 operating CPUs, but the Linux kernel (much like the BSD kernel) has had large locks and serialisation points spread throughout the kernel for a loong time. ISTR that SGI Altix doing a computational workload (little kernel mischief). They got the CPU representation (ie, not a 32 bit bitmask) right and the scheduler working. But I bet you couldn't do 4096 CPUs worth of parallel disk or network IO.

FreeBSD, like Linux, has been recently focusing on modern IO and CPU intensive workloads, rather than the Altix "Demo" from years gone by. So ignore the silly SGI Altix datapoint and look at what people are using it for now.

(Yes, I'm a FreeBSD developer.)

No. memcmp() is designed to be used by sort functions. IIRC: It's supposed to return:

0: identical
+ve: string 2 > string 1
-ve: string 1 > string 2

'bool' doesn't cut it. But yes, their comparison was bogus.

BSD architecture allows real time interrupts to kernel space. It's just that almost all the drivers these days use ISR threads that are woken up by an interrupt.

There's nothing stopping a carefully written driver doing everything in the ISR.

Really? cddl and gpl software have their own directories. You can build totally functional kernels, completely with the tools given to you by the build system, without:

* any binary blob drivers (and yes, ath(4) doesn't need a binary blob, so you can get wireless support!);
* any GPL or CDDL code (so no ZFS and no ext2fs, for example.)

Please re-inform yourself of the reality of FreeBSD's distribution and structure before making such uninformed comments.

-adrian (@freebsd.org)

.. and you have to back it up. .. and you have to keep it powered. .. and you have to keep it cooled. .. and you have to keep it managed. .. and it takes up physical space.

There's a valid argument for what you're trying to say, but it's not "2gb flash drive for a dollar". You're missing the whole lifecycle of IT. Please address that?

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/hacking_cars_th.html

Just saying.

Really? I have almost all of their PCI/PCIe 802.11n hardware working, stable and supporting 802.11na/802.11ng. I fixed AR9280 support, fixed AR9285 support and added AR9287 support. Once 802.11n support is in the tree I'll move to tidying up the DMA and interrupt path and introduce the changes needed for AR93xx and later series NICs. I have working bluetooth coexistence patches that I haven't yet setup a test bed to validate and I have things stable now on both SMP and UP machines.

The only thing I've broken is TDMA.

A lot of those commits are because I've been (a) fixing issues as they've come up, and (b) I like doing small commits that make it easier to bisect changes.

I think I've done a pretty good job. I'm glad to take constructive criticism. The PR system is ----> That way. :)

I'd like to hope we have more to say than what's on the slides.

.. but the bureaucrat is better equipped to see the bigger picture. There may not be enough boots to go around, but hats may be needed at some point in the future, so why waste production capacity now.

The fact that they don't is orthogonal to this.

.. why isn't this in wikipedia somewhere? Was this ever published?

.. except that relies on your database indexes, and woe be if you have a 1 million line file.

"CHAIN" in BASIC dialects tended to be a "merge in the code into the running state." Ie, it wouldn't delete the current variable set.

It's how you got around RAM limitations - you broke your code up into separate source files, and just "swapped" in bits of BASIC code as you needed them.

Then there's "CHAIN MERGE" (at least on the Amstrad CPC), which merges in code into running state -and- code. So you could say reserve lines 10000-65500 for "chained" code, and just do this:

100 CHAIN MERGE "sub.bas", 10000, DELETE 10000-65000 .. which IIRC would do this.

The wifi support is only as good as the money involved. :-)

Come to FreeBSD / PCBSD - and begin enjoying very fine wines / scotch. It's quite a nice place to be.

The crowd sources Jersey Shore, Do You Think You Can Dance and The Biggest Loser.

Please, try again.