Re: Scaling noise

Martin J. Bligh
2003-09-03T15:22:46Z

> multi node yes, numa not much and where numa-like systems are being used
> they are being used for message passing not as a fake big pc.
>
> Numa is valuable because
> - It makes some things go faster without having to rewrite them
> - It lets you partition a large box into several effective small ones
> cutting maintenance
> - It lets you partition a large box into several effective small ones
> so you can avoid buying two software licenses for expensive toys
>
> if you actually care enough about performance to write the code to do
> the job then its value is rather questionable. There are exceptions as
> with anything else.

The real core use of NUMA is to run one really big app on one machine,
where it's hard to split it across a cluster. You just can't build an
SMP box big enough for some of these things.

M.