Re: SMP/cc Cluster description [was Linux/Pro]

Larry McVoy
2001-12-05T21:07:18Z

> > What I am proposing is to cluster *OS* images on a *single* SMP as a way of
> > avoiding most of the locks necessary to scale up a single OS image on the
> > same number of CPUs.
>
> Which, to me, makes the whole thing much less interesting, since there aren't
> SMP systems about that are really large that I know of anyway. Scaling to
> the size of current SMP systems is a much less difficult problem than scaling
> to the size of NUMA systems.

We don't agree on any of these points. Scaling to a 16 way SMP pretty much
ruins the source base, even when it is done by very careful people.

> The main advantage of starting with a single OS image, as I see it, is
> that you have a system that works fine, but performs badly, from the
> outset.

Hey, I can make one of those :-)

Seriously, I went through this at SGI, that's exactly what they did, and it
was a huge mistake and it never worked.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm