[TriLUG] Questions about Threading

[Adrian Likins]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 03:10:14PM -0500, Jeremy P wrote:
> 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.

	8 seems to be the practical limit on 2.4 with x86. 8 way
linux boxes are relatively commonplace (considering the price...)

	I've seen reports of 12,16,20, 24 and such on other
odd arches, but I seriously doubt anyone has those in production
state. Seems like 2.4 supports 16 processor ia64 boxes on some
of the various public linux boxes floating about (I think
http://www.osdlab.org/ has a 16 available for public testing...)


Adrian