Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2006 17:36:47 -0500 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Cc: Josh Paetzel <josh@tcbug.org>, pete wright <nomadlogic@gmail.com> Subject: Re: Venting my frustration with FreeBSD Message-ID: <200612051736.47980.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <200612051606.50137.josh@tcbug.org> References: <200612041443.15154.josh@tcbug.org> <57d710000612051336y60823c77ta4143645529c1878@mail.gmail.com> <200612051606.50137.josh@tcbug.org>
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On Tuesday 05 December 2006 17:06, Josh Paetzel wrote: > On Tuesday 05 December 2006 15:36, pete wright wrote: > > On 12/5/06, Josh Paetzel <josh@tcbug.org> wrote: > > > On Tuesday 05 December 2006 11:19, Nick Hibma wrote: > > > > > 1) SMP scalability. 4-way boxes are relatively common, and > > > > > hardware with higher CPU counts is only going to get more and > > > > > more common. I'm no industry expert, but 5 years from now > > > > > will my clients be considering buying 32 and 64 way boxes? > > > > > Possibly. Will FreeBSD be in a positiion to compete favorably > > > > > vs. the alternatives on such hardware? > > > > > > > > People have been working on this for years. It's a difficult > > > > thing to get right. Sun has been spending a *LOT* of time doing > > > > this for Solaris, and I bet that even Linux isn't there yet. > > > > > > Linux actually scales very well in this area. My friends in the > > > supercomputer business tell me that people are successfully using > > > linux on 1024-way SSI boxes. It doesn't scale quite as well as > > > IRIX, but a lot of people opt for linux anyways. > > > > > > For instance, NASA Columbia, which is a cluster of 20 512-way SSI > > > Altix's is successfully running linux, and comes in #8 on > > > top500.org's supercomputer list. > > > > yea, i'm pretty familiar with those systems and i would have to say > > that the Altix is indeed quite impressive. but, i would not equate > > the ability for SGI to implement a large SSI cluster like this to a > > "normal" user being able to implement a similar setup with a stock > > linus kernel or stock distro for that matter.... > > > > -pete > > What sort of 'normal' user has access to that kind of hardware? > > Of course they aren't running a stock kernel or distro, but neither > are a lot of the guys using linux on real-time embedded hardware. > Google doesn't run a stock kernel or distro either, and Verio and > Yahoo don't run stock FreeBSD distributions or kernels either. I would wager that Yahoo's FreeBSD kernel is a lot more stock than the Altix one for Linux though. I think the poster's point is that you aren't going to get an OTS OS to run on a 512-way cluster, and that if one had time and hardware one could probably hack FreeBSD up a bunch to run on a 512-way system just as SGI hacked up Linux. -- John Baldwin
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