9 ms·

How significant is this change? Are there utilities in the server world which do the same but with extra steps instead of having it as an os builtin?

ianai 3y ago
Feels a little like rdma or mellanox/ib. Hey, I’d personally love if something openbsd did got it some wider industrial use.
- bartekrutkowski 3y ago
  Like OpenSSH? ;)
  - normaler 3y ago
    delusional every professional uses PuTTY /s
    - bartekrutkowski 3y ago
      Of course they do. And what is that thing on the other side that Putty connects to for our professional friends in vast majority of cases?
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        ...I was going to make a joke about Windows servers, but actually AFAIK Windows just uses OpenSSH for its SSH server so that kinda proves the point doesn't it?
  - ianai 3y ago
    I mean the actual kernel. But, you know, needs a killer feature people want to deploy at scale.
    - Gud 3y ago
      And like OpenSSH, due to the BSD licensing, it will be quickly be ported to other operating systems. Which is an advantage to us all, a great thing for humanity.
welcometoC 3y ago
This is not some sort of "new" feature invented by OpenBSD. It's literally "just" them making their kernel (finally) multi-core instead of locking everything every time a process does networking. Pretty much every other OS out there has done that for years, if not decades. (FreeBSD for almost 20 years, although arguably at first that release was quite unstable.)
- gostsamo 3y ago
  This is what surprised me. It looks as a common sense approach, but it is on the front page of hn.
  - knorker 3y ago
    I like openbsd for what it is, but they do have a tendency to imply or outright say that the thing they just did is something they invented. Like when they launched W^X (which isn't even an accurate term, because that implies that read-only non-execute pages don't exist), they basically claimed to have invented it. And they said that it was "impossible" to do on 32bit x86. Which was a surprise for those of us who had been running that on 32bit x86 for years, using grsec patches. They defended themselves for this mis-statement by saying that they don't look at what other OSs, like Linux, do. Fair enough, but don't say you're the first to do it, then. OpenBSD was late to the game of multiprocessing, deliberately ignoring multi-CPU machines. They only had to change their minds when suddenly consumer CPUs started being multi-core/multi-threaded. And since they have fewer developers (and not a focus on performance), they've understandably been lagging behind in this space.
    - daneel_w 3y ago
      > "OpenBSD was late to the game of multiprocessing, deliberately ignoring multi-CPU machines. They only had to change their minds when suddenly consumer CPUs started being multi-core/multi-threaded." Which seems like an entirely reasonable choice if they felt there were bigger priorities. OpenBSD received SMP support in November 2004, right at the same time as the first mainstream dual-core CPU arrived on the market. I get what you mean by "late to the game", but I also feel that it's not really a fitting statement.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
daneel_w 3y ago
For OpenBSD it's significant and somewhat of a milestone because its network stack has been trailing a bit in terms of transfer speeds when compared to e.g. Linux. The kernel has had a lot of "big locks" that hamper executional performance in complex ways across many different venues, and the past few years the developers have been busy cutting these into smaller pieces.

ianai 3y ago

Feels a little like rdma or mellanox/ib. Hey, I’d personally love if something openbsd did got it some wider industrial use.

bartekrutkowski 3y ago
Like OpenSSH? ;)
- normaler 3y ago
  delusional every professional uses PuTTY /s
  - bartekrutkowski 3y ago
    Of course they do. And what is that thing on the other side that Putty connects to for our professional friends in vast majority of cases?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      ...I was going to make a joke about Windows servers, but actually AFAIK Windows just uses OpenSSH for its SSH server so that kinda proves the point doesn't it?
- ianai 3y ago
  I mean the actual kernel. But, you know, needs a killer feature people want to deploy at scale.
  - Gud 3y ago
    And like OpenSSH, due to the BSD licensing, it will be quickly be ported to other operating systems. Which is an advantage to us all, a great thing for humanity.

welcometoC 3y ago

This is not some sort of "new" feature invented by OpenBSD. It's literally "just" them making their kernel (finally) multi-core instead of locking everything every time a process does networking. Pretty much every other OS out there has done that for years, if not decades. (FreeBSD for almost 20 years, although arguably at first that release was quite unstable.)

gostsamo 3y ago
This is what surprised me. It looks as a common sense approach, but it is on the front page of hn.
- knorker 3y ago
  I like openbsd for what it is, but they do have a tendency to imply or outright say that the thing they just did is something they invented. Like when they launched W^X (which isn't even an accurate term, because that implies that read-only non-execute pages don't exist), they basically claimed to have invented it. And they said that it was "impossible" to do on 32bit x86. Which was a surprise for those of us who had been running that on 32bit x86 for years, using grsec patches. They defended themselves for this mis-statement by saying that they don't look at what other OSs, like Linux, do. Fair enough, but don't say you're the first to do it, then. OpenBSD was late to the game of multiprocessing, deliberately ignoring multi-CPU machines. They only had to change their minds when suddenly consumer CPUs started being multi-core/multi-threaded. And since they have fewer developers (and not a focus on performance), they've understandably been lagging behind in this space.
  - daneel_w 3y ago
    > "OpenBSD was late to the game of multiprocessing, deliberately ignoring multi-CPU machines. They only had to change their minds when suddenly consumer CPUs started being multi-core/multi-threaded." Which seems like an entirely reasonable choice if they felt there were bigger priorities. OpenBSD received SMP support in November 2004, right at the same time as the first mainstream dual-core CPU arrived on the market. I get what you mean by "late to the game", but I also feel that it's not really a fitting statement.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

daneel_w 3y ago

For OpenBSD it's significant and somewhat of a milestone because its network stack has been trailing a bit in terms of transfer speeds when compared to e.g. Linux. The kernel has had a lot of "big locks" that hamper executional performance in complex ways across many different venues, and the past few years the developers have been busy cutting these into smaller pieces.