[2807] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: BT-958 or Flashpoint?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Leonard N. Zubkoff)
Thu Nov 13 17:56:37 1997
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 12:31:32 -0800
From: "Leonard N. Zubkoff" <lnz@dandelion.com>
To: elof@image.dk
CC: dave@nic.com, linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
In-reply-to: <Pine.LNX.3.95.971110050554.13021A-100000@hugin.localdomain>
(message from Kristian Soerensen on Mon, 10 Nov 1997 05:33:12 +0100
(MET))
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 05:33:12 +0100 (MET)
From: Kristian Soerensen <elof@image.dk>
You can find the information in the kernel itself.
Read all files with Buslogic or flashpoint in their name
in /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi/ .
Both 958 (Multimaster) and FlashPoint is supported. The difference is that
the FlashPoint makes the PC CPU do some of it's work.
This makes the card a little cheaper, but uses some CPU power when in use.
If that's a worthwhile tradeoff is up to you.
It might be a good idea with many windoze machines that doesn't do that
much work while the disks is being accessed. Many people is eg. only using
one program at a time in office work.
For server and workstation-like use, where multiple different programs
are at work at the same time, the (small) extra cost of a 958 will in
most cases be money well spent.
My guess is that FlashPoint is meant to be a low-cost offering, competing
against the NCR/Symbios/WhatEver 875 line, on the market for Windows
desktop machines.
The Multimaster (958) line will then be the card for servers, and more
demanding desktop users, like most Linux users.
When the FlashPoint boards were first designed and released, it was the era of
100MHz - 133MHz Pentium processors and it was indeed true that the MultiMaster
boards performed better. As processors increased in performance, the tradeoff
changed such that the FlashPoint boards actually perform better in most
environments. Inf act, for Linux the tradeoff was earlier since it is so
efficient. As long as interrupt latencies don't grow too large, the FlashPoint
boards generally perform slightly better in overall elapsed time for a task.
On a heavily loaded server, the MultiMaster will probably still perform better.
The MultiMaster boards are also slightly more robust in that having a
completely separate processor makes error recovery more certain.
Leonard
