Beowulf: A theorical approach

Jakob Østergaard jakob at ostenfeld.dtu.dk
Thu Jun 22 12:39:13 PDT 2000


On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Greg Lindahl wrote:

> > > It's hard to build something that plugs into an Intel-designed CPU bus.
> > > Scali tried it and it didn't work so hot.
> >
> > At least on Intel hardware, SMP systems have cache coherency in
> > the hardware,
> 
> Scali's design (and the one I was considering) do not do cache coherency.
> They are for message passing systems. As you may gather, I'm a message
> passing bigot. Er, evangelist.

  :)    It makes sense then.

> 
> Doing cache coherency would be like the SGI O2000, and that would be far
> more expensive than what I was talking about. There are approaches that
> attack that problem -- see the Isotach research group's work. They are at
> UVa, which is why I am aware of them. But not my cup of tea.

I wouldn't hold my breath for something like that either.

-- 
................................................................
: jakob at ostenfeld.dtu.dk  : And I see the elder races,         :
:.........................: putrid forms of man                :
:   Jakob Østergaard      : See him rise and claim the earth,  :
:        OZ9ABN           : his downfall is at hand.           :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............:




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