GIANT-free Networking in FreeBSD 6.0 CURRENT and Upcoming 5.3 STABLE

I've been watching Robert Watson's work on removing the GIANT lock from the FreeBSD kernel. This is an aspect of the FreeBSD SMP project (aka SMPng). Robert's posts on 24 Aug 04 and 28 Aug 04 explain what is affected by these developments. The aspects I care about include the following:

- Those using KAME IPSec will not be able to disable the GIANT lock, and least not yet.
- FAST IPSEC does work with GIANT removed.
- The ath (802.11g), bge, dc, em (Intel gigabit), ep, fxp (Intel 10/100), rl, sis (Soekris Net4801), xl, and wi (802.11b Prism2) network interface drivers work with GIANT disabled.

You can see how the GIANT lock appears when enabled in the dmesg output from a Dell PowerEdge 750 running FreeBSD 5.3-BETA1.

John Baldwin's Locking in the Multithreaded FreeBSD Kernel explains what the GIANT lock does.