On Tue, 20 Jul 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hey everyone, I'm Zach Schimke and I've heard alot about this SMP stuff but I
> don't even know where to begin. I want to build a SMP supercomputer and I
> have about 10 processors. But my problem is that I can never find a good
> starting point. I want to know how others have developed their own but I can
> never get a straight answer.
>
> In short, how do I build this thing?
>
> -Zach Schimke
<sigh>
Exactly what are you intending to use the system for? What is your budget,
and what components do you have already? When you say 10 processors, what
are they? I am guessing that you don't have a 10-way SMP motherboard, and
even if you did, the hardware that would be required to run it would be so
exotic that Linux would almost certainly not support it in it's current
form.
Now, for all of you who are going to tell me that Linux will support up to
16 CPUs, I am aware of that, but implementing 16-way SMP using intel's
architecture is rather expensive, which is why we very rarely see systems
with more than 4 CPUs (bar a few interestign systems from ALR, which used
some clever trickery to make a 6-way PPro system a few years back).
So, to get back you your question - if you have ever built your self a PC,
then it shouln't be very difficult. You simply plug the components
together, install Linux, and re-compile the kernel with SMP support.
However, I get the impression here that you might be talking about a
"cluster" of computers, rather than an SMP computer. For that, I'm afraid,
this is the wrong list to post to... For clustering you may want to try
http://www.beowulf.org
HTH,
Gordan
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