Author: Matthew Hull
Date: 21:47:49 08/31/03
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On August 31, 2003 at 20:38:23, Russell Reagan wrote: >In a unix system administration class today, the professor said that the SMP >support in Linux isn't very good. He said it's okay if you're doing 2x or maybe >4x, but he said that anything higher than that and you should use something like >Solaris, and gave the impression that Solaris was a very solid choice for an SMP >machine. > >I was suprised that he said this, because (IIRC) Dr. Hyatt uses Redhat Linux, >and he doesn't seem to think very highly of Sun, and he obviously knows a >"little" about all things SMP ;-) > >I have a few questions in regards to how different operating systems compare in >terms of SMP support. > >Which operating systems are preferred? > >Which operating systems should be avoided? > >How is Windows? > >How is FreeBSD? I heard Gian-Carlo saying something about FreeBSD not having >good multithreaded support. > >If Linux has sub-par SMP support, will this be improved in kernel 2.6? I am by no means an expert, but it's my impression that Linux does fine with 4-way, certainly as well as any other *nix. But I get the impression that though it can scale to 16, one would in fact do better with AIX or Solaris at the moment. Of course, Linux will catch up in time, though there has not been much incentive up to now to improve SMP in Linux beyond 4-way, there being a paucity of affordable systems for which it could take advantage. The biggest reason is that if you can afford a 16-way or higher, Solaris is provided practically gratis. You biggest cost is the hardware, not the OS, so using Linux would not save money. That's about the extent of my understanding (or mis-understanding). MH
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