Implementing SMP clusters
Larry McVoy's cache-coherent cluster (or SMP cluster) idea was discussed
(briefly) on this page two weeks ago. Now
Karim Yaghmour has posted a white paper
describing how such clusters might be implemented. The design uses a
modified version of Adeos to run multiple Linux kernels, each of which has
control over a subset of the whole system. The result is a path toward SMP
clusters that requires only minimal changes to the Linux code itself.
There is still the little matter of actually doing the work, of course, but
this design is a promising start.
Those interested in Adeos may also want to look at the milestone 2 release which, among other
things, adds SMP support.