On Tue, 2002-09-10 at 16:23, Phil Payne wrote: > > This was forwarded to me by a co-worker. It's interesting, and sort of > > echoes IBM's experience with 64-bit Linux on zSeries. IBM mainframes have a > > maximum of 16 processors per box, but they also saw linear scalability when > > running a 2.4 kernel in 64-bit mode. This is very nice verification of > > those results. > > I didn't think Linux supported a 16-way image.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that IBM only *sells* boxes with a maximum of 16 CPUs. That is not an architectural maximum of zSeries. Consider that z/VM guest virtual machines can have a maximum of 64 virtual CPUs (again, an implementation limit , not architeture)! Granted, it isn't useful to have more virtual CPUs than you have real ones, but I just don't want anyone to get the idea that mainframes have some sort of inherent CPU limit. >From a practical standpoint, the partitioning (LPAR) and virtualization (z/VM) capability of IBM zSeries allow you to add additional workload via horizontal growth, rather than vertical. Of course, vertical is still available as an option where needed. Alan Altmark Sr. Software Engineer IBM z/VM Development
