FYI, no-go with booting FreeBSD-5.3 on AlphaServer ES40

[Wilko Bulte]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 04:07:39PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote..
> [ On Friday, December 10, 2004 at 21:28:03 (+0100), Wilko Bulte wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: FYI, no-go with booting FreeBSD-5.3 on AlphaServer ES40
> >
> > FreeBSD does not even support 4GB so don't moan... :-P
> 
> Sigh....
> 
> Any ES40 with fewer than 4 memory options installed (i.e. 8GB _minimum_)
> is a huge waste of space, energy, and money.  With just 2 RAM options
> installed (i.e. 4GB minimum), the machine is way under-utilized and can
> only achieve 1/2 its memory throughput.  With just one RAM option
> installed (i.e. 2GB minimum), the machine crawls at 1/4 its potential
> memory throughput.
> 
> There are many better, faster, cheaper, smaller, types of systems
> available if one does not need to break the 4GB 32-bit address space
> boundary.

I know. Feel free to fix it.

> I.e. I guess FreeBSD doesn't really truly support the ES40 (or anything
> bigger) at all.  You should definitely not list them as supported!  I'm

That is bull, as I did run FreeBSD on the ES40 at work.  Briefly, as
it is not my machine.

> sure anyone else familiar with Alphas would make the same assumption as

You should not make assumptions, it is documented that dependent on the
machine model the limit is 1 or 2GB for FreeBSD.

> I have that the full RAM configurations of any supported machine would
> work -- that's the whole reason for wanting a 64-bit address space in
> the first place!

Yep, it would be very nice.

> > But surely not on 16G RAM.
> 
> BUT, that's only half-way to where we want to go with 32GB installed...

Go and run Tru64 for a UNIX that makes full use of the ES40.  None of the
*BSD or Linux will if you look at it more or less closely.

-- 
Wilko Bulte				wilko at FreeBSD.org