SMP Kernel setup: ULE versus 4BSD scheduler

[Monoecus]

Regarding multiprocessor hardware setups pfSense still uses 4BSD as the default scheduler instead of the new and extremely fast ULE scheduler. I propose that this will be changed in the next version of pfSense's kernel to cope with the many new systems that have multicore CPUs. Note that the ULE scheduler will also work fine with single-core processors. Moreover, it is just much faster on newer hardware.

Do you share my view?

[Cry Havok]

ISTR that ULE isn't solid until 7.0 and isn't going to be the default until 7.1.  I'd suggest that it's smart to trust the FreeBSD developers and stick with the default scheduler for the release that pfSense is based upon.

[sullrich]

ULE is already the default scheduler in our 1.3 / RELENG_7_0 builds.

[David_W]

I'm using SCHED_ULE on an 8 core FreeBSD 7.0 amd64 box. As has been said, SCHED_ULE is not recommended in the FreeBSD 6.x line, but works fine in FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE and will be the default for FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE.

Current pfSense releases are FreeBSD 6.x based - and I hope and expect that these will stick with SCHED_4BSD.

[thekurgan]

Thanks, I guess 1.2.1 RC2 isn't actually the 1.3 branch, so 1.2.1 is probably SCHED_BSD as well.

[Monoecus]

This information is old. The version 1.2.1 is also based on FreeBSD 7, so it should by now be running with the ULE Scheduler.