From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (cthulhu.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.2]) by neteng.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id SAA81595 for ; Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:58:37 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: Received: (from majordomo-owner@localhost) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) id SAA30280 for linux-list; Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:58:06 -0700 (PDT) mail_from (owner-linux@relay.engr.sgi.com) Received: from sgi.sgi.com (sgi.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.37]) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id SAA62135; Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:57:36 -0700 (PDT) mail_from (ralf@uni-koblenz.de) Received: from informatik.uni-koblenz.de (mailhost.uni-koblenz.de [141.26.4.1]) by sgi.sgi.com (980309.SGI.8.8.8-aspam-6.2/980304.SGI-aspam: SGI does not authorize the use of its proprietary systems or networks for unsolicited or bulk email from the Internet.) via ESMTP id SAA10789; Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:57:34 -0700 (PDT) mail_from (ralf@uni-koblenz.de) From: ralf@uni-koblenz.de Received: from uni-koblenz.de (ralf@pmport-04.uni-koblenz.de [141.26.249.4]) by informatik.uni-koblenz.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA16818; Sat, 18 Jul 1998 03:57:29 +0200 (MEST) Received: (from ralf@localhost) by uni-koblenz.de (8.8.7/8.8.7) id DAA01512; Sat, 18 Jul 1998 03:57:15 +0200 Message-ID: <19980718035715.D378@uni-koblenz.de> Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 03:57:15 +0200 To: "William J. Earl" , Greg Chesson Cc: Alex deVries , Igor Loncarevic , SGI Linux Subject: Re: What about... References: <9807162230.ZM17359@xtp.engr.sgi.com> <199807171411.HAA11412@fir.engr.sgi.com> <19980717192954.16464@uni-koblenz.de> <9807171101.ZM18755@xtp.engr.sgi.com> <199807171819.LAA12327@fir.engr.sgi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1 In-Reply-To: <199807171819.LAA12327@fir.engr.sgi.com>; from William J. Earl on Fri, Jul 17, 1998 at 11:19:54AM -0700 Sender: owner-linux@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com Precedence: bulk On Fri, Jul 17, 1998 at 11:19:54AM -0700, William J. Earl wrote: > I expect that much of the work will gradually happen in linux, once > the remaining small-CPU-count issues are resolved. Right now, there > is no shortage of interesting problems to attack. :-) Actually I'd hate it if Linux'd be ``finished'' ... > One possible way to approach the large-CPU-count space with linux > is to indeed run multiple linux kernels, one per node in a ccNUMA > machine, and add a distributed OS layer at a fairly high level. If it > is not underway already somewhere, I would expect someone to take up > the project as a graduate school project. Some systems of this sort > have been built or attempted, with varying degrees of success. Given > the linux bias toward small and simple, a linux-based distributed OS > might actually work. I don't know the exact technical details but something similar has already been done back in '95 (?) when some guys in Australia ported Linux to Fujitsu's AP1000. That's of course a different architecture and a multikernel approach makes much more sense there. > One important ingredient in such a system, which would be > valuable immediately for clusters, would be a efficient distributed > volume manager and file system. Hans Reiser is currently working on a new filesystem with alot of fresh ideas. In some aspects what he is aiming at is similar to XFS, in some aspects not. He basically started on a white sheet of paper with his design, so his team's code isn't contaminated by old ideas. His work looks pretty promising. Among his plans is also the implementation of a distributed filesystem. Current benchmarks are looking pretty good, in fact in some cases extremly good. The URL to checkout for interested people is http://idiom.com/~beverly/reiserfs.html. > In any case, trying to port linux straight to a large ccNUMA > (or even a large SMP) system would be a lot of effort for limited > return at present. Explecitly not talking about the MIPS port - I think it makes sense in working on porting to machines beyond what we currently scale to. But I agree about the ``large'' thing. Ralf