dual processors and linux 1770
Roy L. Fuchs
What do you mean by this? Doubling the size of what given number?
Sure they do, but do the benefits of dual CPUs match the requirements of the offered load? We know nothing about the load the O.P. would offer the system (buttuming the O.P. is not just trying to get us do do his homework buttignment).
Roy L. Fuchs I think they took the time to make an SMP kernel because it is easy enough to say "just use a double (or quadruple) speed processor", but...
Sure it is. But if the O.P.s load is to get a single-threaded process to run fast, he would be far far better off getting a faster uniprocessor system because the single threaded process would run only one processor and all the other processor(s) would have to do is handle the occasional interrupt.
Only sometimes. This is critically dependent on the offered load. If the user(s) are running a bunch of independent processes, some CPU limited, some IO limited, etc., they might well keep additional processors busy, even if all the independent processes were single-threaded.
Roy L. Fuchs I don't have nice, convenient cite to give you. But if you read the various AMD platform docs on AMD's website, multiple sockets are only mentioned...
But since most applications are not, in themselves, multi-threaded, we are stuck with what we have. So the usual single-user desktop machine operated by a naive user is not going to get much from a multi-processor machine most of the time.
dnoyeB I guess you never saw Windows 2.0 or whatever it was (pre 3.1). I tried programming applications in that, and it was the pits. Many times I though it had crashed, but all...
Buy what? The O.P. wants to know what considerations apply to multi-processor systems running unspecified applications.
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