dual processors and linux 1771

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 not all that easy to do it. It is not enough to make a faster processor anyway: chip sets, memories, and mother boards must improve a-pace. Even if you believe Moore's law, you have to wait 18 months to get one. Back in those days, it took us about a year to get 14 MHz chips even though we had little trouble making 10 MHz chips. People worried that Moore's law was soon to top out, and they were right: if you look at the trouble they have making a 12-layer motherboard to support 3 GHz processors, you can see how close they are to the limits. Recall that at 3 GHz, radio signals go at most 4 inches in a cycle, so you would want the whole motherboard to fit in a 1 inch diameter if you did not use heroic design techniques.

-- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. V PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. ^^-^^ 16:15:01 up 85 days, 5:47, 4 users, load average: 4.43, 4.40, 4.23