[TriLUG] Questions about Threading

[Jeremy P]

On Tue, 26 Mar 2002, John F Davis wrote:

> Furthermore, there are threads and lightweight processes.  Something that I
> read* recently (now I am an expert) which I think is neat is that
> solaris threads have a lot of spin lock nonsense in them.  This means that
> they are not as fast as linux threads, however the extra spin locks
> become insignificant when scaled across multiple cpu's.  This makes sense
> since Sun is fond of lots of processors whereas linux is limited by its
> support of multiple cpu's.  (Is it 2 or 4 cpu's max?)

I've seen quad-CPU Linux systems, so it's definitely not a max of 2.

I think the limitation is more related to motherboard availability for
Intel processors, rather than than the Linux kernel.

I Googled a bit and can't find the upper limit for the 2.4 kernels, but
the 2.0 kernels supported up to 16 processors.  I find it very unlikely
that that number has gone down for newer kernels.

--Jeremy