Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 14:22:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Ben Black <black@zen.cypher.net> To: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@MindBender.serv.net> Cc: Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee>, smp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Quad Pro 150 motherboard? Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970428141844.32065d-100000@zen.cypher.net> In-Reply-To: <199704281754.KAA28971@MindBender.serv.net>
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yup, the license restricts you. NT4WKS refuses to run on more than 2 CPUs. does that change a damn thing? nope. note that i didn't say anything about NT4SRVR which *can* handle more than 2 because M$ wills it so. the fact is, when a machine is running NT on more than 4 CPUs it is not running a stock NT. my point remains valid: the most popular commercial, SMP, x86 OS is NT Workstation and you cannot make that run on 4 CPUs, hence another reason there is little demand for more than dual CPU boards. b3n On Mon, 28 Apr 1997, Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com wrote: > > >> >a 4 or 6 CPU P6 board for *other* than a large server...think about that > >> >for a few minutes. > >> >(hint: NT4 Workstation can't handle more than 2CPUs and that is the most > >> >popular commercial SMP-capable OS) > > >> Bullshit. > > >Well, at least 2 of the 2 NT workstations installed from 2 different CD-s > >claim they are capable of upto 2 proc-s. I haven't also seen in any place > >a reference that says otherwise. > > That's because your _license_ restricts you to no more than two > processors. > > I've seen NT run on up to 8-way Pentium and Pentium Pro, and DEC > Alpha, boxes. We use 4-way Alphas and Compaq's all over the place at > work. > > There's nothing inherent in the design of NT that restricts it even to > 8-way. It's just that's the most I've seen it run on, and NT isn't > really designed to run optimally on massively parallel designs. > Sequent, for example, has some proprietary patches to the NT kernel > which enable it to run efficiently on their up-to-32 processor (as far > as I know up to 32 -- I'm not a Sequent expert) Intel-based > "mini-main-frames". > > This coupled with the fact that, as far as I know (and it's not very > far), there isn't a standard for multi-processor design, for Intel > chips, that goes beyond four processors. So anything bigger would be > somewhat proprietary and require specific support code. > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@MindBender.serv.net > --< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >-- > NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3, > Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32... > NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others... > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- >
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