Re: cluster list

[Greg Lindahl <lindahl@conservativecomputer.com>]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 09:08:57PM -0500, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:

> Wasn't Larry McVoy proposing something along these lines? As I recall
> it, the example was:
> 
> You have a NUMA box with 16 processors.
> Processors are in groups of 4.
> You run 4 kernels, each doing 4-way SMP.
> You have kernel code to make the system appear unified.
> 
> The numbers could be from a big Intel box. (the 4-way Xeon limit)
> The idea would work for Sun or SGI boxes. Depending on the
> details, it ought to work on my hardware too.
> 
> (there is a summit meeting on this soon... wish I was invited)

Yes, Larry has been seeking to trade the problem of too many kernel
locks for the problem of too much concurrency. Those of us who have
worked on distributed systems aren't so sure he's headed in the right
direction. But it's an interesting idea.

But, like every other approach, it's going to have limits even if it
works the way Larry thinks it will. For example, Larry still needs a
global filesystem.

-- g


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