Merge window opens, kgdb merged

Posted Apr 20, 2008 1:37 UTC (Sun) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: Merge window opens, kgdb merged by sbergman27
Parent article: Merge window opens, kgdb merged

As far as I know, SGI Altix is based on Itanium, not x86.  I haven't come across an x86
machine with more than 32 processor cores (8 socket, 4 core Barcelona).

Merge window opens, kgdb merged

Posted Apr 20, 2008 6:23 UTC (Sun) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (3 responses)

SGI systems include x86 versions with this CPU count - for example, NASA recently bought an
Altix ICE blade server with 4096 Xeon CPUs:
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2...

However, the line between this blade-based system and traditional Altix systems is not
entirely clear, though presumably with the right problem a blade server would be just as good.

Merge window opens, kgdb merged

Posted Apr 20, 2008 7:59 UTC (Sun) by trey (guest, #37500) [Link] (2 responses)

Not a single system image (SSI). Imho runs multiple instances of Linux kernel.

Big shared-memory x86 machines

Posted Apr 20, 2008 8:48 UTC (Sun) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link] (1 responses)

That's correct, Altix ICE (and Altix XE) are clusters. Each 2-socket node runs its own kernel,
and there is no shared memory between nodes, so inter-node communication is with message
passing (MPI).

AFAIK all big shared-memory machines SGI makes are Itanium-based.

I suspect the answer to this conundrum is that this changeset just increases some previous
x86-only max-cpu limit, and the mention of 4096-way machines refers to the Itanium-based SGI
Altix.

Big shared-memory x86 machines

Posted Apr 22, 2008 12:46 UTC (Tue) by knan (subscriber, #3940) [Link]

There are development going on inside SGI for future and one-off machines, you know. The patch
came from a SGI employee, and definitely is for x86-64. While their current big boxes are
IA64, future machines doesn't need to be...