Re: Broadcom ServerWorks HT-1000 support in OpenBSD

Mike Jakubik writes:
 > Andrew Gallatin wrote:
 > > Mike Jakubik writes:
 > >  > It seems like OpenBSD 3.9 has support for the HT-1000 IDE/SATA chipset, 
 > >  > and we are still missing it. Is there any way to port their code over? 
 > >  > There are a few nice motherboards out there that use this chipset (most 
 > >  > amd server boards use the crappy nvidia chipset and the accompanying 
 > >  > crappy network card).
 > >
 > > Why do you call the Nvida chipset "crappy"?   I assume you don't care
 > > about the PCI Express bandwidth of the accompanying "northbridge"?
 > >
 > > From a performance standpoint, the Nvida chipset is far from crappy,
 > > and can easily sustain 10GbE speeds for both send and receive, as well
 > > as send+receive at the same time.  Our lab tests have shown well over
 > > 18Gb/s for send+receive using our PCI-e x8 10GbE card in an Nvidia
 > > CK804 based opteron.
 > >
 > > For any application which is moving a lot of data using PCI-e cards on
 > > an opteron, I would strongly recommend Nvidia based servers. 
 > >   
 > 
 > None of that matters if the system is unreliable, and what you are 
 > boasting here is just the speed of a PCIe bus. See the mailing lists for 

Not only is the nvida PCIe bus faster, it is more reliable as well.
This may be the fault of various motherboard vendor's implementations,

 > the numerous problems associated with this chipset and the network card.

Then FreeBSD needs to use a decent driver for the network card.
How about bringing in the OpenBSD if_nfe driver?

I have had zero problems with any Nvidia based machine (aside from
early problems with FreeBSD's buggy if_nve ethernet driver).  We
currently have in excess of 40 nforce 4 based servers and desktops,
all of which work perfectly with Linux and Solaris.  Even FreeBSD has
behaved OK for me for the last few months since the fix that got the
if_nve ethernet driver to work at all.  The buggiest machines I have
seen have been HT2000/HT1000 based.


Drew