New Funded Project: FreeBSD/ARM Architecture Superpages Support

The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that Semihalf, an embedded solutions company, has been awarded a grant to develop transparent superpages support for the FreeBSD/ARM architecture. Semihalf is co-sponsoring the project with the Foundation.

The ARM architecture is already common in the mobile and embedded markets, and is becoming more prevalent in the server market. Among the more interesting industry trends emerging recently is the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture, which is an "ARM server" concept. Many top tier companies have started developing systems or are announcing products with this architecture.

One of the features needed for FreeBSD to be successful in this area is transparent super pages.  This provides improved performance and scalability by allowing TLB translations to dynamically cover large physical memory regions.

The project is expected to complete in mid July 2013.

Foundation at SCALE

There will be a FreeBSD booth in the exhibition area of SCALE, to be held at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles, CA. Exhibition hours are Saturday, February 23 from 10:00–17:30 p.m and Sunday, February 24 from 10:00–16:00. Registration is required for this event, with a nominal fee for the expo area and a slightly higher fee for the entire conference.

We'll be giving out copies of PC-BSD and FreeNAS as well as some cool swag at the FreeBSD booth. We can also accept donations for the FreeBSD Foundation. If you are in the Los Angeles area, drop by and say hi!

Foundation at Ottawa User Group Connect

User Group Connect is a relaxed one day unconference for meeting and interacting with the many technical User Groups in Ottawa. The event runs on Saturday, February 9 from 10:00-17:00 at Shopify in the Byward Market.

The Foundation will be represented at a FreeBSD booth and will be accepting donations. If you're in the Ottawa area, drop by and visit at this free event.