Re: GRR!! SMP=1 sucks

kwr@kwr.hnv.com
Thu, 9 Apr 1998 10:12:20 -0500 (CDT)


And lo, Manuel J. Galan saith unto me:
> On 09-Apr-98 Elliot Lee wrote:
> > Are there any SMP machines which require an SMP kernel to run? Are they
> > common enough to make SMP the default for? As far as I know, running a UP
> > kernel on an SMP machine will act the same as running a UP kernel on the
> > equivalent UP machine.
> Why a SMP kernel should not boot on an UP machine?
Because it happened to be broken at the time, in an SMP-related way.

> NT4 installation goes through SMP kernel in ALL
> machines...
That's nice, if useless. All the overhead, nothing to do with it.
(If SMP can make your install go faster, either the media is really
slow and the files are compressed, or someone should be fired...)

> SMP boxes are today very common and they will increase
> in number according to economic considerations.
"Economic considerations" today, at least in the PC world, are:
1) SMP is hard to get right from a software perspective,
2) '95 doesn't use SMP and NT might not use it all that well
3) Intel would rather sell you one expensive processor than two
cheap ones, and
4) Only Intel can make SMP-capable chipsets for Intel's SMP
protocol, and while other chipset makers make chipsets
that can do SMP with AMD or Cyrix chips, no motherboard
maker has made an SMP non-Intel-CPU board...

Keith

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