Re: USB on an ALR 9000 under Linux?

From: Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Date: Wed Aug 30 2000 - 13:26:28 EST


> P-Pro CPUs dropping fast, these would make a nice SMP box (6 200Mhz
> processors would make a nice server, or in my case, a good test for parallel
> algorythms that use a large number of threads).

Let me suggest something different. Buy a pile of cheap celerons and 100Mbit
cards. Then you can try and make your algorithms massively parallel instead

> Now, the 2 questions. Is a 512K cache on the CPU going to make a significant
> difference versus 256K cache. I can see how more cache means less memory bus

On a PPro it may help. But if you are worried about memory bandwidth a ppro
isnt a good option anyway by modern standards

> access and less bus contention to memory, but if these caches get cleared
> pretty often on an SMP machine, then it may not make much difference. Any
> thoughts?

We dont flush caches on task switches and we dont flush caches on cross cpu
invalidated (just the TLB is flushed in general, sometimes specific pages)

> Second thought, if I add in a PCI USB card, and run a kernel that supports
> USB, can I run the keyboard and mouse off USB and not bother with the
> "serial" card. The USB card may be cheaper than the serial/keyboard/mouse

Possibly - if it will boot that way. You may well not get USB bios emulation
unless you have a card with roms on it and stuff.

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