[geeks] Drool-worthy

[Mike Meredith]

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:17:29 -0500, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> ring for communications.   So, in short, it seems to me that NUMA
> support is built directly into the CPUs.

Well, ccNUMA ... AMD specifically mentions support for cache coherency.

> What's not clear to me is if it is also possible to do regular SMP
> instead of NUMA with Opterons.

Another googleresult I read (but don't entirely trust ... it seemed
more confused that I was last night) indicates that it does do SMP and
that you have to turn on NUMA support by using hardware that supports it
and an os that supports it.

> I think Opterons are fairly cool looking.  

I thought so enough that my new laptop is an AMD64.

> I wish someone would build
> true legacy free machines around them, and I don't mean the wimpy
> Intel Legacy-free standard, but to even do away with the BIOS and to

It appears that "SmartFirmware" (http://www.codegen.com) supports
Opteron processors giving an OpenFirmware "BIOS". I think some of the
newer (and bigger) Suns use SmartFirmware.