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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!MathWorks.Com!news2.near.net!news.delphi.com!usenet From: John Dyson <dysonj@delphi.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: 4.4-lite? Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 01:19:10 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 19 Message-ID: <xQ+RCHu.dysonj@delphi.com> References: <2vgvc7$3tg@spruce.cic.net> <30finf$98e@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <Ct75oE.75p@newsserver.aggregate.com> <30h9jl$fg4@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <Ct8o9E.8My@newsserver.aggregate.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1d.delphi.com X-To: Rob Healey <rhealey@sirius.aggregate.com> Rob Healey <rhealey@sirius.aggregate.com> writes: > OK. EXACTLY what are these VM enhancements. They've been touted > up and down but no specifics have ever been given. Let's hear > 'em! How exactly is FreeBSD's VM so much more lightning fast > than NetBSD and how does that apply to non-x86 architectures, > ESPECIALLY big endian? Much of the info is in the release notes for FreeBSD. Additionally, I can probably dig up some of the postings that I made to comp.os.386bsd.dev... and repost them. The code will work fine on big endian architectures, but some of the enhancements are non-starters on machines with TLB-only like sparcs. The FreeBSD VM code is NOT lightning fast, but there are some algorithmic improvements that DO usefully increase %cpu for running user processes on memory starved systems. Also, process start-up time is significantly improved. You can actually measure the speed improvements, and they are significant.