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- From: jeremy@classic.asd.sgi.com (Jeremy Higdon)
- Subject: Re: SCSI disconnect or lack thereof in kernel/devices
- Message-ID: <prtp4jo@sgi.sgi.com>
- Sender: jeremy@classic.asd.sgi.com
- Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Mountain View, CA
- References: <2935@contex.contex.com> <1992Sep11.120817.3032@odin.corp.sgi.com>
- Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 00:01:12 GMT
- Lines: 30
-
- In article <1992Sep11.120817.3032@odin.corp.sgi.com>, georges@atl380.atlanta.sgi.com (George Smith) writes:
- > I'll take a stab at this one.. Dave can straighten out in incorrect info.
-
- Just one comment.
-
- >
- > In article <2935@contex.contex.com>, jeff@hobbes.contex.com (Jeff Carey) writes:
- >
- > |> 2. Is it beneficial (integrity, speed, dependability-wise) to disable
- > |> disconnect on the host adapter?
- >
- > Generally system performance will suffer when not allowing disconnects. In particular
- > if you are using a tape device with a high SCSI id (often SCSI id 7 on SGI machines).
- > The higher the SCSI id the higher the arbitration priority for the SCSI bus. With
- > tape devices taking the bus often and for long periods of time system performance
- > goes down the tubes.
-
- The target ID doesn't actually make any difference when you don't allow
- disconnect, since it only comes into play when arbitrating for the bus.
- The only time that targets arbitrate is when they want to reselect (reconnect),
- which they will never do with disconnects disabled.
-
- In general though, system performance will suffer in that while one device
- is performing a command, other devices are idle. Since some tape operations
- can take a very long time (1 minute or more for a rewind, for example), you
- might see a large degradation in performance (the system could appear to
- hang, for example).
-
- jeremy
-
-