From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 19 17:22:13 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC064106566B for ; Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:22:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@parodius.com) Received: from mx01.sc1.parodius.com (mx01.sc1.parodius.com [72.20.106.3]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E28BA8FC30 for ; Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:22:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@parodius.com) Received: by mx01.sc1.parodius.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id C5E821CC060; Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:22:13 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:22:13 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick To: Chuck Robey Message-ID: <20080319172213.GA28075@eos.sc1.parodius.com> References: <47DF1045.6050202@chuckr.org> <20080318082816.GA74218@eos.sc1.parodius.com> <47E146F9.5060105@chuckr.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <47E146F9.5060105@chuckr.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17 (2007-11-01) Cc: FreeBSD-Hackers Subject: Re: remote operation or admin X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:22:14 -0000 On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 01:01:45PM -0400, Chuck Robey wrote: > What is most important in my considerations are, how might it to possible > to stretch our present smp software to be able to extend the management > domains to cover multiple computers? Some sort of a bridge here, because > there is no software today (that I'm awarae of, and that sure leaves a huge > set of holes) that lets you manage the cores as separate computers) so that > maybe today I might be able to have an 8 or 10 core system, and maybe > tomorrow look at the economic and software possibility of having a 256 core > system. I figure that there would need to be some tight reins on latency, > and you would want some BIGTIME comm links, I dunno, maybe not be able to > use even Gigabit ethernet, maybe needing some sort of scsi bus linkage, > something on that scale? Or, is Fiber getting to that range yet? > > Anyhow, is it even remotely posible for us to be able to strech our present > SMP software (even with it's limitation on word size to limit the range to > 32 processors) to be able to jump across machines? That would be one hell > of a huge thing to consider, now wouldn't it? Ahh, you're talking about parallel computing, "clustering", or "grid computing". The Linux folks often refer to an implementation called Beowulf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_%28computing%29 I was also able to find these, more specific to the BSDs: http://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/myths.html#clustering http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-cluster/2006-June/000292.html http://people.freebsd.org/~brooks/papers/bsdcon2003/fbsdcluster/ -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |