> >> Scalability
> >> -----------
> >...
> >
> >> As far as multi-cpu scalability, Linux currently supports upto 16 CPUs in a
> >> single system. MS claims that they support upto 32, but since they only run
> >> on Intel hardware, and there currently is no Intel-based system with more
> >> than 8 CPUs in it, this is clearly marketing hype.
>
> Unisys makes a box with 32 Intel CPUs in it:
>
> http://www.unisys.com/hw/servers/enterprise/7000/default.asp
>
> They claim support support for Windows NT, Windows 2000 and UnixWare.
>
> Write a big check to Unisys and you can find out how well Windows 2000
> scales. I hear Compaq is reselling these systems as well. The Unisys
> web site isn't saying much about raw performance. They talk about
> price/performance and server consolidation, which seems to be what
> everyone says when they're trying to sell expensive servers.
The Unisys ES7000 has just started shipping in limited quantities. Even
with $$ to spend, I doubt you could get a 32-way configuration yet.
Perhaps later in the fall.
> Sequent makes a box with 64 Intel CPUs in it:
>
> http://www.sequent.com/hardware/numaq2000/numa.html
>
> They support Dynix, their own UNIX variant. No NT.
Sequent was bought by, and absorbed into, IBM last year. Their
boxes are now marketed under the NUMA-Q and NUMAcenter brands. While
the spec sheets do talk about 64x servers, understand that some of
the glossies also talk about 254-way servers. They're about the
same level of reality in those two numbers. Few, if any, boxes ship with
the full 64-CPU complements. You can run NT, at least on NUMAcenter,
but only on individual quads. Neither NT nor Win2K does NUMA. The
house Unix, DYNIX/ptx, is what you'll need.
--
The question of "how NT scales" or "how Linux scales" on SMP is a
bit silly in the abstract. If you really care about scalability,
you've got to know what application you're trying to run, and what
class of middleware (esp. DBMS) you're willing to run it with. Those
are more important than the OS.
I know the Linux community doesn't particularly want to hear
this...indeed, probably cannot hear it...but NT has scaled quite
well in ERP and DBMS tasks on 4x, 6x, and 8x Intel servers. Linux
is honestly a little behind, say at 2x to perhaps 4x, esp. on
I/O-bound and DBMS tasks.
On CPU-bound tasks, it's a wash, becuase the OS isn't really
involved much anyway. This is where the Linux clusters come in and
do such a beautiful job. And most of the network server jobs where
Linux is such a powerful contender are almost always uniprocessors,
maybe 2x. The scalability that counts in this arena is horizontal,
not vertical, and factors like replicated managment are even more
important than scale.
Btw, in discussing scalability, you might want to keep in mind that
the world's fastest TPC-C benchmark (that is, DBMS and OLTP
performance) is a Windows 2000 cluster. At just over 440K tpmC, it
beats the fastest Unix competitor (at ~136K tpmC, the IBM S80, a 24x
box) by over 3:1. If you forego absolute performance in favor of
price/performance, all ten of the top ten resuls run Windows. Linux
has never run this race.
I know it's fun to bash Microsoft, but Windows' benchmark
results--audited, no less--are quite resonable. If you're interested
in a technical rather than marketing discussion, it's something you
may want to keep in mind.
--
Jonathan Eunice
Analyst & IT Advisor
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