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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!amdahl!veritas!amdcad!weitek!pyramid!ctnews!unix386!lance From: lance@unix386.Convergent.COM (Lance Norskog) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: PROJECT IDEA: Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) for 386BSD? Message-ID: <8879@unix386.Convergent.COM> Date: 26 Jun 92 22:09:45 GMT References: <1992Jun25.070736.6370@iitmax.iit.edu> <l4jcegINNs1k@neuro.usc.edu> Organization: Unisys/Convergent, San Jose, CA Lines: 19 Compaq and Apricot make multi-486 machines, I think Compaq's goes up to 5. The problem is not hardware, but software. Symmetric multi-processing for Unix is an invention of the devil. You have to rewrite everything in the kernel, and of course you've heard of "kernel bloat"? There are multi-processor OS bases out that that emulate Unix. Synthesis emulates BSD Unix, and I think Choices emulates V7. Synthesis is several times faster than SUNos on the same hardware. If you want multi-processing action for cheap machines, your best bet is SCSI. SCSI is not a disk connector, it is a multi-cpu (up to 8!) 4mhz LAN with a severe cable length problem. Since it can do guaranteed reliable transmits if you implement some sort of retry, you won't need to run TCP over it. You would probably want to just add a separate AF_SCSI to the network switch, and do NFS over it. Lance Norskog