Guest post by In a blog post from Haiku developer Pawel Dziepak he describes the work he has been doing on improving processor support. Most notably removing the 8 processor limit. From the blog post:
The main scheduler logic has been completed and now I am concentrating mainly on bug fixes, adjusting tunables and some minor improvements. I also removed gSchedulerLock, a spinlock I mentioned in my last post, and replaced it with more fine grained locking. An new interfaces for cpufreq and cpuidle modules has been created together with a cpufreq module for Intel Sandy Bridge or newer cores and cpuidle module for all processors that support C-states and invariant TSC. Furthermore, IRQs (including MSI) can be now directed to an arbitrary logical processor. Implementation of inter-processor interrupts has been improved so that it avoids acquiring any lock if it is not necessary and supports multicast interrupts. And, last but not least, 8 processor limit has been removed.
Does it support Intel Haswell and modern wireless adapters?
Technically, yes and yes… but I have a feeling you have very specific hardware you’re looking for support on, and these are vague questions you ask.
I’m being vague so that someone can say what works and what doesn’t.
(But yeah, I’m thinking of my i5 4200U laptop with Intel AC wireless.)
Specific deviceids would help figure that out…
For example, the ipro 4965 wifi driver might support your chip already – and if not, future versions sucked in from freebsd likely will:
http://cgit.haiku-os.org/haiku/tree/src/add-ons/kernel/drivers/netw…
Guessing it’s a 7260-ish?
Looks like FreeBSD doesn’t have it yet either:
http://freebsd.1045724.n5.nabble.com/FreeBSD-Intel-7260-td5865163.h…
“And, last but not least, 8 processor limit has been removed.”
I thought Haiku was not based on Dano and was a rewrite from scratch. So there was limitations implemented in a rewrite ? Is there also the 512 MB memory limit ?
Kochise
Edited 2013-12-31 07:46 UTC
What is that 512MB limit? Rhapsody? BeOS had ~ 1GB limit. Whereas in Haiku AFAIK there is no such bogus limit.
Yeah, sorry, the 1 GB limit. And also I had an AMD Athlon XP Palomino 1.4 GHz that couldn’t neither run BeOS, even patched, nor YellowTab’s ZetaOS, due to this limit and another regarding the boot procedure.
Still have my original YellowTab’s ZetaOS CD and box
Kochise
Edited 2013-12-31 09:40 UTC
So have you even tried to boot Haiku on this 1.4GHz machine?
The machine is no more mine. My heart has followed a more progressive path.
Kochise
No, it was more complicated than that. BeOS had an overall 1GM memory limit, but as I recall it, the size of the RAM in your Video Card came in to that picture. So straight R5.03 with no patches really didn’t like running with 1GB of RAM. I seem to recall that anything more than 768MB and a 256MB Graphics card being really problematic. Dano was even worse IIRC.
It was an artificial limitation though. The kernel was compiled with a static limitation over the RAM size, and had Be Inc released the source, it would have been possible to alter that. It’s certainly what YellowTab did at any rate. I once asked JBQ about this, and he said it was something one of the engineers could have fixed pretty easily. The limitation was there because, as with much in IT, there had to be a limit. Back then, given the maximum memory slots counts and DIMM sizes, 1GB of RAM was fairly unfeasible on a desktop machine.
Still that an odd design decision for an OS written from scratch during the 90s.
In 1997, my PC had 16MB RAM and a 1GB hard drive. Given the price of RAM, 1GB would have cost 3 or so times the price of the entire machine.
Internally, there was no real limit – but there was this stupid macro that Be put into the headers for the max CPUs, set to 8, and then there was a system_info struct which had an array of CPU infos using that macro.
For binary compatibility with BeOS apps, the system_info struct could not change – and thus, the max CPU count had to remain at 8 until a proper solution could be designed.
That solution was to deprecate the system_info struct and the API that was used to obtain it, while leaving a binary compatible version of it for old binary apps to utilize.
This means old BeOS apps running on Haiku will still only see a maximum of 8 CPUs.
Edit: It also means that the new API and structures have no artificial limit, and all the apps that use this data had to be modified to use the new API (which is more advanced and includes a lot better topology detail info than the old one did anyway).
Edited 2013-12-31 14:59 UTC
Why do you think it’s based on Dano? all BeOS (with the exception of some internal builds) were limited to 8 CPUs due to an internal array for addressing the CPUs. This is much more difficult to program a workaround for backwards compatibility, and was generally considered a glass elevator project until recently.
The 512 mb memory limit has never been in place, and it’s not exactly anything that was particularly challenging to the Haiku team (IIRC this was fixed sometime during the newos kernel development before it was chosen by OpenBeOS as their kernel).
so… it is a rewrite from scratch to keep everything binary compatible old BeOS programs can only access the first 8 CPUs. The new scheduler is a GCC4 compilation, meaning it would take as little as a recompile of an old program to make it address as many CPUs as you wanted, assuming it didn’t make use of the CPU array (like anyone with old “Blinkenlights”, the pulse Application).
Again, go back to 4chan… troll.
I just installed the latest nightly. A TON of work has been done on WebPositive, the web browser!
In the past, only the “simple” HTML version of Gmail would work. But now, the full version of Gmail AND even Gmail Chat also work.
Nice!
Edited 2013-12-31 14:35 UTC
That is largely thanks to the work done by Adrien Destugues who, along with Pawel, has been doing contract work for Haiku.
Unfortunately, we have pretty nearly run out of funds to pay them at this point, which means those two contracts may have to end very soon and they will have to seek other employment.
Where is the FOSS army always eager to idealistically defend their values but not to realistically fund them ?
Kochise
I’ve already donated as much as I can afford this year. Maybe once I get a post-holiday paycheck of my own I can chip in again.
You’re NOT a one-man army, don’t spare your wages.
Kochise
Hang on, you ask where the developers who are willing to step up are, and then when one steps forward you shoot him down. You can’t have it both ways.
Shoot him down ? Nope, he still can do whatever he wants with his money. I bet he is not the only one out there, where are the others hiding ? I also paid my share to the cause by buying a ZetaOS license without being able to use it due to the stupid limitations exposed above. I just want people to get their return on investment.
It’s like funding research against cancer, you can make the research last forever to get virtually unlimited funding, or, look for the causes of the cancer and avoid them. Pour a vast amount of cash in Be, YellowTab, Haiku, … funding the tracking of such bugs and miswritten source code to still have a half finished product with several limitations.
Or find more viable alternatives that are not inherently limited from the ground up ?
Seriously dudes…
Kochise
Edited 2013-12-31 22:05 UTC
Yeah and that Linux thing will never take off.
I guess i’m one of those crazy people who have invested thousands into Haiku… as a matter of fact I’m usually in the top 10% of donators. I’ve even got the original waltercon T-shirt to prove it.
Difference between me and you is I didn’t support yTab or any of the others because they were a commercial product, wanting to be disguised as open source, with very dubious credentials… YellowTab always looked like a scam from day 1. OpenBeOS/Haiku has always been the way to go since 2001.
I had lot of people on the BeOS bandwagon in the R3 era, and ran the Pikes Peak BeOS User Group. I know this can be a successful OS
As for miswritten source code, what are you referring to? almost all of Haiku is very well run, the article is showing there are people willing to invest time and money into this project.
Inherently limited from the ground up… that’s insulting. Thanks. Go back to 4chan… troll.
Achievement unlocked?
If Haiku have to follow a stupid bawkward compatibility with the original BeOS, then yes, it is “inherently limited from the ground (BeOS) up (Haiku)”, live with it…
Kochise
Keep up the spirit, ignore the 4chan troll…
He already stated he invested his $133k a year (presumably the whole 5 years they shilled that POS across the world… so like just shy of a cool million) into yTab, I’d be pissed too if all I got was a yTab ZetaOS retail box.
a million here, a million there, pretty soon you’re talking some serious money… too bad it didn’t save yTab… haiku seems to get along well with 30-40k a year… AND they are more stable than the bastard stepchild of BeOS ever was
Hmm, yeah, I was double pissed of with yT : first I bought the early ZetaOS release with T-Shirt for something like 100^a'not and received nothing. One year later (it was more a rather supportive move at first) I call them to get some infos, at first they refused to send me anything, but well they eventually made a “gesture”. And since ZetaOS was updated, they charged me 15^a'not more (or something like that) to finally get the retail box, without t-shirt (at this point I didn’t give a f–k anyway) and still cannot boot properly on my Athlon XP Palomino with 1.5 GB DDR and 128 MB ATI 9800 Pro or 32 MB Matrox G550.
So I can pour some money or time into a niche product/OS (long time ATARI supporter) but sometimes, you’d wishes that these products works like expected, mostly if you pay for them. And dealing with artificial limitations “because you have to draw a limit somewhere, like 640K memory” just drives me insane. The Atari range of computer was full of those limitations, like the 14 MB limit (plus 2 MB IO to fit on a 24 bits bus) without thinking forward.
So I got fed up of supporting half assed products, I couldn’t write my curiculum on an Atari (no suitable printer driver) couldn’t on ZetaOS (couldn’t even boot) but Windows did, having the software and printer drivers. Sorry to say, but computers have to be useful, they are just tools anyway. If I cannot use a computer for its dedicated task, I’ll not frame it and light candles around and pray for it by pouring charity with my tax payer money, I just need the job to be done. I’d loved to have my Atari or ZetaOS (or Haiku) to do it, but see, you even have to pay contract coders to get the job done. Partially.
Life is harsh, waking up is even harsher. Live with it. Now if you call this trolling, you sure should have a really bad day.
Kochise
Edited 2014-01-01 08:01 UTC
Ahh… now I see your confusion
I hate to break it to you, but ZetaOS is a completely different codebase. yTab was using a questionably leagal copy of Dano’s codebase from Be, Inc. Zeta had an 8 CPU limit, yet you purchased a copy. I have a copy of Zeta from a LONG time ago, it was the least stable OS I’ve ever run.
Haiku is writtten from scratch using only deskbar and tracker codebases from Be, which were open sourced about 15 years ago. You must be crazy to think Zeta and Haiku are the same thing.
I’m not sure why you are still comparing the two… unless you are a troll
Rewrite from scratch, but until recently Haiku had the same 8 CPU limitation. And it was not THAT limitation that prevented me to use it on my mono-core configuration. Call it a 22 yo “OS so far ahead of its time” all you want, troll or not, you must wipe the sand in your eyes…
BTW, $100K and 1733 years of effort when you don’t start from nowhere and already have a working binary model is pretty lame. SkyOS or Visopsys reached quite a working model, really from scratch, in a fraction of that time frame. And with far less LOC.
Kochise
Hmm… SkyOS, yup, where did that lead? well it’s dead… VisOPSys… yeah… lots of people using that one on a daily basis as well, somehow that OS is worth your attention as worthy of funding. Not shutting them out in any way, they have done a LOT since 1997, however it has different goals than Haiku does.
Haiku is like BeOS that they are attempting symmetric multiprocessing via modular I/O bandwidth, pervasive multithreading, preemptive multitasking and a 64-bit journaling file system. There are no other open source operating systems that come close to the level of sophistication.
So I take it you have a 8+ CPU machine laying around, congratulations, maybe you could help test or file bugs or something (but you wont because you are only here to troll)
As for your mono-core machine if it’s not supported then did you bother to file a bug report? (no, because you want to troll)
I’m not sure what you are trying to accomplish by your trolling but maybe you should read a little Dale Carnegie, oh wait, it’s antiquated and doesn’t support 8+ CPUs since it’s a book. You might just learn something…
I’ve said before, go back to 4chan… troll.
Oh and just to prove my point that you are a troll, now that it does support 8+CPUs you hate it even more, and haven’t addressed anything anyone has said about it other than to say VisOPSys and SkyOS is better and that we should stop trying to fund an alpha testing OS that actually works and is stable.
Ask anyone who was around at the time of BeOS and they all agree it was “far ahead of it’s time”. Don’t mock what you obviously will never understand (mostly because you refuse to help, and I’m the one with sand in my eyes? you’re wearing your hoodie backwards).
Again I ask what did Haiku ever do to you? sounds like your beef is with yTab yet you still blame everything ever remotely connected to BeOS.
Come back with another OS you think is better (oh wait, you mentioned Windows… what a joke)
There is more businesses running thanks to Windows than Haiku. Get your math straight next time.
I have a 4-core APU (AMD 3500-M) that suits my needs perfectly. Windows 7 Pro 64 bits supports it.
Kochise
Let me correct that for you…
What? The “FOSS Army” DID fund these changes.
It doesn’t help that free and open source software advocates that ALSO want to use Haiku are relatively few.
Every little bit helps, though. At this moment, people who use GoodSearch have raised $515 for Haiku by basically doing NOTHING.
http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=949749
Whoaaaa, $515, that’s… a day wages for a professional coder (including taxes)
Kochise
$515 a day is $130k a year (not including taxes). I’d love to be paid like it was the year 2000 in the .com boom again.
Here in the states $40k is a good starting wage just out of college, I don’t know of anyone who has made more than $80k since about 2002.
I can’t see why Haiku threatens you like it does, if you don’t like it just go away back to your iPad, or try unboxing the monstrosity yTab product you seem to invested your life savings into at some point (obviously more than $133k a year) and see if it’s more stable than an open sourced project (haiku) you seem to hate so much.
Go back to 4chan… Troll.
Hmmm, sorry, I must explain : I’m french, and here in France, when you get $100… sorry, 100^a'not, you have to give 20% as value add tax, on the remaining 80^a'not you have to give almost 35% as corporate tax. On the remaining 53^a'not you have to pay your various professional insurances (job, office, …) leaving you with 40^a'not. Then you pay your personal insurances (jobless, medical, retirement, …) that leaves you with 30^a'not.
So with $515 you’d get at best $155 net. In France. And with that you’d pay stuff with value added tax so there is almost already another 20% share that will go into the government’s pocket.
With an average 250 workday per year, I’ve now leave you with your favorite calculator to get an idea of the real income (250 * 155 = 39k excluding taxes) of a professional coder.
Kochise
Edited 2014-01-01 07:41 UTC
Not what you said above…
The point is moot with your explanation. You were trolling drcouzellis and generally being a jerk about the funding he mentioned.
I’m not here to say Haiku has the best funds available, but we do have a lot of quality programmers working for free.
from http://www.ohloh.net/p/haiku
Again that’s more code than yTab ever dreamed of for less investment, if yellowTab programmed that much it would have cost tens of millions of euros. Haiku has done it for about a hundred thousand euros.
Haiku is based on an operating system that was so far ahead of its time that it took 22 years of technology advancements to catch up enough for you to complain about it, and the funding model that haiku, inc. has chosen to pursue.
Sounds like I don’t want to move to France due to the tyrannical taxation problem.
This is the strangest thread, trolls everywhere. I’m talking to both Kochise and alphasienor, play nice you two. I signed up for an account just to say this.
1) YellowTab Zeta was pirated as per ACCESS, Stop comparing Haiku to YellowTab Zeta. Haiku may one day support your hardware, but not unless you tell them it’s broken. (This is to Kochise)
2) Haiku probably has no future in a commercial setting, at least not as successful as Windows. This doesn’t stop me (or even Kochise) from using it, and enjoying it. (this is to alphasienor)
3) What do the arguments above have to do with a feature improvement (who cares that Haiku/BeOS/Windows/Mac/Visopsys/MSDOS/OS9/OS2 or whatever OS you feel like listing only supported less than 9 CPUs, like we are using computers with 8+ CPUs anyways) (this is to Kochise AND alphasienor)
Both trolls in this thread need to chill out, you both have been in the alternate OS world for years, IIRC Alphasienor was at one point a big shot in the BeOS world. Kochise used to like Haiku, I’m not sure what happened to his passion for such a unique OS, but the arguing and trolling needs to stop.
I like BeOS/Haiku, I like Linux, I like Windows, … It’s just the emphasis about how BeOS(was)/Haiku(is) so vastly superior (when they ‘just’ solved the 8 CPU limit) that bristle my hairs.
Just recon that Haiku is a hobby project in what you poured many hours/dollars into for a tepid result. Otherwise if BeOS(were)/Haiku(is) so powerful with their journaling/multitasking/whatever they would be used in video/audio editing, database/server, … in place of Linux/eComstation/Windows.
I was used to believe in inherent technological superiority (Atari vs. Amiga, 68000 vs x86, …) but this is the most wrong belief you could have. As I said in a post above, computers have to provide solutions, be useful. Atari at 16 MHz too slow and/or no driver? Ditch out. BeOS/ZetaOS cannot boot on my computer? Ditch out. Linux prevent from using my newly installed computer while root/admin without having to set a ton of parameters? Ditch out.
It’s just the overawe that some people get when their favorite OS now display a shadow under the mouse cursor that makes my yawn. We’re in 2014 now. Never seen 2001 (space odyssey) or 2012 (first encounter) ? Look where we only are with computers right now. Depressing.
Don’t be a slave of your materialism (favor a brand, a technology, an OS) but find the one that makes you go forward.
Kochise
Edited 2014-01-02 19:24 UTC
For the record, it wasn’t “just solved”… there were a few people who changed that MAX_CPUS macro and recompiled their Haiku to access 16 cores (or more). The resulting version of Haiku was not binary compatible with BeOS R5, however.
So you’re making a big f’ing deal about nothing.
It hasn’t been important because frankly, very few people even have or need more than 8 cores still.
As it was though very few people even have or need more than 1 GB memory. Do you will ever get the picture ?
How many people do you think need 64 bits journaling file system and all the stuff around if you cannot manage more than 1 GB of memory or 8 CPU ?
Looking professional ? Nope…
Kochise
Straw Man argument right there… your logic is flawed, so I’ll make a similarly flawed statement on point #4 (because I guess I’m also a troll).
1. Your original argument was Haiku sucks because it doesn’t support 8 CPUs and 1GB of ram (not to mention stating it pirated code from BeOS)
2. It has always supported more than 1GB of memory and also as many CPUs as you would ever care about.
3. They finally made the 8+ CPUs addressable while keeping binary compatibility with BeOS, and the RAM limit has never been an issue for Haiku
4. Therefore you are going to make Haiku your next OS (whenever it gets to R1).
I just don’t see why you are still arguing Haiku sucks when the “underpaid” developers have addressed your every concern in these comments.
Flawed ? I think you showed more unreasonable logic than I.
Nope, by the time Haiku reach R1 I’ll have written my own OS in a fraction of 1733 years and $100k.
They just took 22 years to address them.
Kochise
Edited 2014-01-03 20:59 UTC