[rescue] E10k systems coming down in price

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

>From: "Devin L. Ganger" <devin at thecabal.org>
>
>On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 09:42:46AM -0700, Skeezics Boondoggle wrote:
>
>> Those are the things that differentiate Solaris, along with other features
>> in the kernel that allow for massive scalability.  Sun abandoned the
>> "uniprocessor mode" vs. "multiprocessor mode" thing quite some time ago,
>> so the Linux guys like to beat up on the fact that on single-user or even
>> 1-4 way small SMPs that Linux is faster - and in some tests it certainly
>> may be (context switch times, faster fork(), etc.)  However, get beyond
>> 12-16 CPUs and it falls over, while Solaris is just starting to hit its
>> stride.  It just doesn't make sense to cram all those high-end features 
>> into the typical Linux distribution, but I expect that in time there will 
>> be a Linux optimized for larger systems.
>
>This is the conventional wisdom, but the recent kernel series is doing a
>*lot* to improve the high-end scaling of Linux.  Linux Journal had an
>extremely interesting article a few months back about some of the work that
>SGI is doing with Linux on a 64-processor system and the amount of work
>they were able to get out of it on real-world problems -- the equivalent
>of 59 of the 64 processors.  Ain't bad at all.

I think I read that article.... 

>
>Almost all of the code was going back to the kernel group, too.

I hope so... if they didn't they would aggravate all the Linux religous
zealots ! :-)

>
>With both SGI and IBM working on Linux for their high-end hardware, it
>won't be long at all before it can handle big iron decently.

SGI and IBM big iron.... although I suppose some changes will help out
other big iron that other people port Linux to...

>
>It would be nice to see Sun taking some notice of this and looking for
>what innovations they can apply.  No product is so good that it can't
>find room for improvement, and the Solaris kernel is so heavily
>optimized for the high-end machines at this date...

Isn't this preciesly the direction Linux is going (slowly being
"optimized" (at least modified) for big iron) ?

>


-- Curt

Curtis Wilbar
Hawk Mountain Networks
rescue at hawkmountain.net

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