[geeks] Drool-worthy

[Shawn Wallbridge]

On 10-Nov-04, at 2:38 PM, Mike Meredith wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 15:09:17 -0500, velociraptor wrote:
>> Ignore the PC stuff in the intro, and get right to the meat info and
>> pics of Crays.  Anyone care to comment on the accuracy of the PC
>> geek's article?
>
> I'm too tired to do it justice (just back from the 2nd of a 3 day AIX
> course), but :-
>
> * It implies that the Origin2000 was one of the first NUMA systems. I
>   don't believe it was ... Sequent and similar was far earlier. The
>   ccNUMA architecture did address some weaknesses of the NUMA
>   architecture.

He said the Origin 2000 was _SGI's_ first NUMA machine.

>
> * The AMD Opteron is a NUMA system ? I suppose it might have on chip
>   support for some NUMA architecture, but surely NUMA is more the 
> system
>   than just the CPU ?

I don't know what he was talking about here.

>
> * It mentions the StarFire as being designed by Cray. Wasn't it just
>   the CS6400(?) designed by Cray ? Admittedly the E10K is quite
>   different to the other USII Enterprise line.

IIRC Sun bought part of Cray before or during the SGI purchase, so he 
could be kind of right. I would have to look into it more. Either way, 
the starfire name didn't start until the 15k's (IIRC), so that would 
have been long after Cray was gone. He may be thinking of the E10k.

shawn