Re: dumb question about multi-core processors...
Michael Fothergill wrote:
> Dear Debianists,
>
> I read an article:
>
>
> http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=032003A1JK8W
>
> It says that Intel has made a chip with 80 processors on it that it says
> is a teraflops device and only uses a low power consumption.
>
> But the article suggests that it is tough to write an OS to take advantage
> of a large number of such processors.....
>
> Dumb question 1:
>
> How tough would it be to produce a version of Debian that could run this
> sort of chip if a commercial version of it were made available?
It's basically SMP on a chip. Same way we currently handle SMP systems.
> Dumb question 2:
>
> Could it be that if Intel puts out a chip or array of chips or whatever
> its called of this type that the existing OS companies like MIcrosoft and
> Apple would take so long to figure out and implement an OS that run on it
> that Linux might be the only usable option for such a long time that it
> might even end up with an effective monopoly here?
I believe this is already the case with SMP systems. There are SMP versions
of Windows, but for the most part, SMP support under Windows is well known
for inefficiency as most Windows programmers don't think about the
possibility of there ever being more than one CPU available. Not really
worth forking out the bigbucks on a special Windows build for.
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