From owner-freebsd-arch Thu Jun 27 21:42:26 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 357D037B406 for ; Thu, 27 Jun 2002 21:42:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hotmail.com (f43.law3.hotmail.com [209.185.241.43]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B175443E06 for ; Thu, 27 Jun 2002 21:42:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gat7634@hotmail.com) Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Thu, 27 Jun 2002 21:42:00 -0700 Received: from 149.99.118.139 by lw3fd.law3.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Fri, 28 Jun 2002 04:41:58 GMT X-Originating-IP: [149.99.118.139] From: "Gary Thorpe" To: brooks@one-eyed-alien.net Cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Larry McVoy's slides on cache coherent clusters Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 00:41:58 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Jun 2002 04:42:00.0554 (UTC) FILETIME=[245BA4A0:01C21E5E] Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >From: Brooks Davis >To: Terry Lambert >CC: Jonathan Lemon ,Julian Elischer >,"Greg 'groggy' Lehey" , >arch@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: Larry McVoy's slides on cache coherent clusters >Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 15:26:16 -0700 > [...] > > The 65,536 processor machine that Good Year built for modelling > > laminar airflow on the full shuttle airframe was purpose built > > hardware with a seperation of 2. So were most of the Connection > > Machine series from Thinking Machines, Inc.. > >For things you can actually buy, anything over 2 CPUs from SGI falls into >this catagory (and many of the dual CPU systems are actually unconnected >dual nodes from larger systems.) Which is how redundancy *can* be implemented in a NUMA machine. Since nothing is centralized (no main cpu or memory bus to share), it should be possible to make the system more easily resistant to hardware failure. > >IIRC ASCI-Red (the first Teraflop supercomputer) actually runs >on something like the CC model. It's made of dual CPU PII systems >(actually, it started with PPros and was upgraded with those weird PPro >form-factor PII Xeons) but acts something like a single system image. >It's a bit more complicated then that since the service portion runs an >OSF/1 derivative in a sort of single system image mode, but most nodes >run a lightweight dedicated OS. You mean like a microkernel? I have seen references to "cellular" computing, where each node has its own microkernel to do low management for that node and have all the nodes's microkernels cooperate to have a functioning system. Isn't this fundamentally different from how Linux/FreeBSD work? _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message