Just a bit of musing

[Carter T. Shock]

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We've got a rack of 10 4-cpu alphas. They load share just fine.
(in fact, they're set up to share across cpu's AND between the ten boxes. Imagine running a mud on one of those!)


----------
From: 	Chris Gray
Sent: 	Wednesday, March 12, 1997 9:23 AM
To: 	Multiple Recipients of MUD Design Mailing List
Subject: 	Re: Just a bit of musing

In the Sun world, this has never been true. SunOS didn't use SMP's very
well, because when anything needed kernel work, a single global lock kept
everyone else out of the kernel. Even then, there was no CPU reserved for
the kernel. Under the newer Solaris, the locks within the kernel are of
much finer granularity, so several CPUs can be executing kernel code at
the same time. My understanding is that IBM's AIX went through similar
changes (AIX 3.5 didn't support SMP, but AIX 4.1 was a rewrite, and is
much like Solaris on SMP's). I'm not sure about HP's HPUX, but the dual-CPU
machine beside my desk at work doesn't seem to suffer any problems, and
most certainly can have both CPU's busy doing user work.

:It is also my understanding that NT 4.0 uses a different model and
:implements
:"load sharing" as you define it above.   I have heard rumors that Digital's
:64-bit Unix
:uses the "load sharing" model.  Does anyone have any info on this?

I'd be surprised if anyone wrote an operating system which reserved a CPU
for the OS itself. However, it *is* MicroSoft being talked about!!! :-/
DEC is pretty good at software, so they should be able to get it right.
We haven't ported our stuff to Alpha's yet, however, so I have no
direct experience with them.

--
Chris Gray   cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA



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