On 30 Jul 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> In article <Pine.LNX.4.10.10007280922170.20318-100000@waste.org>,
> Oliver Xymoron <oxymoron@waste.org> wrote:
> >
> >Because cache coherence is both complex and expensive and treating a NUMA
> >as a tight cluster rather than a single machine (as you mention) is
> >probably a saner architecture.
>
> This is not necessarily all that true any more. People have gotten
> better at doing cache coherency, and there are people who want to try
> it. Let them.
>
> Yes, I suspect that for true scalability you _do_ want to consider the
> machine to be a tight cluster. However, I don't think it's unreasonable
> to do a ccNUMA architecture of, say, 4x4 (four nodes with 4 CPU's each),
> and use it in an SMP manner.
Agreed. I should read all my mail before replying..
> Such a setup doesn't actually _have_ to be expensive - assuming standard
> chipsets were to come out etc. Remember what made SMP cheap.
NT support? Heh. The most likely route for cheap PC NUMA is 200+ Mhz
memory buses (Athlon and P4 systems), 64-bit PCI-66 and the like (server
disk subsystems will probably make this a desktop reality), and bus
bridges made to replace gig ethernet in Beowulfs..
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 31 2000 - 21:00:35 EST