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23 Second Kernel Compiles
b-side.org writes "As a fine testament to how quickly linux is absorbing technology formerly available only to the computing elite, an LKML member posted a
23 second kernel compile time to the list this morning as a result of building a 16-way NUMA cluster. The NUMA technology comes gifted from IBM and SGI. Just one year ago, a
Sequent NUMA-Q would have cost you about USD $100,000. These days, you can probably build a 16-way Xeon (4X 4-way SMP) system off of ebay for two grand, and the NUMA comes free of charge!"
Remember, this was in 1996. Now, how much did we progress in the last five-six years? :)
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
But, does anyone know how NUMA compares with, say, a beowulf cluster? Does NUMA allow you to 'bind' multiple systems into one, so that I wouldn't need to rewrite my software? Did these guys use a stock GCC or something special? I know you would need to use MPI or similar for beowulf. Is NUMA as scalable as Beowulf in terms of building huge-ass machines (of course if I was going to expend the effort to do that, I might as well want to write custom software).
If this type of system would allow 'supercomputer' performance on regular programs... well... that would be really nice. How much work is it to setup?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
No, this is a case of free software and cheap hardware making technologies available now to many people for whom it wasn't available (i.e., outside the realm of affordability because it was only sold by expensive proprietary vendors) just a short time ago. That is a more significant change than the endless treadmill of Moore's Law to which we had become accustomed.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Think "outside the box" (sorry, horrible pun) of just kernel compiles, and I suspect you'll understand the potential value here.
Let's say you run a decent-sized development house, employing a healthy number of coders. Now, as these folks churn through their days (nights?), they're gonna be ripping through a lot of compiles (if they're using C/C++/whatever). From my personal experience as a developer in the industry, a large portion of a developer's time is spent just compiling code.
If you can implement cost-effective tech like this to reduce time spent on routine tasks like code burns, you increase productivity.
Holy shit, I may have actually come up with a halfway decent justification for "hippie tech" to throw at the suit-wearing types...
temporary email, because MS deserves a good Linux box.
Also, some compilers (notably Borland) are incredibly efficent at compiling
You can say that again. Back in '95 or '96, Borland was claiming that their Delphi Object Pascal compiler compiled 350,000 lines per minute on a Pentium 90. I never checked this, I do know that it was incredibly fast.
What I do know from own experience however:
Back in those days we built a system on Solaris, implemented in C++, that took about 1 hour to compile for about 100,000 lines of source code (hardware was kind of modest compared to today's stuff).
For a bizarre reason that I won't go into, we had to build part of the system on a PC platform. This was done using Borland C++ 3.0 for DOS. Some fool had configured something in the wrong way, resulting in the fact that all the 3rd party libraries were recompiled from source every time. This was more than 1 million lines of C++. It took about 10 minutes on a 486/33!
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
I'm afraid I have to disagree entirely, mate. I'm no neo-luddite by
any stretch of the imagination... I too spend a good proportion
[English is hilarious] of my time on the internet. I could, indeed, be
said to be leading a 'double life' by the unobservant. Notwithstanding
Mr Postman, Still and Talbot whom I cannot speak for; your assessment
of the intrinsically 'good' or 'evil' nature of technology is far from
clearly correct. You're allusion to the internet as a block of marble,
awaiting us to sculpt meaning into its form by using it is desperately
far from the truth. For example, books are not tabula rasa objects,
waiting for readers to impress upon them meaning and effect. When you
read the bible, the koran, Herman Hess or whoever, is it not the
author that steers you're experience of reading?
There are many forms of media in our lives, and the internet is just
one of them
and accessible to many folks does not detract from its power to
affect, to sometimes enourmous proportions, our culture, purpose and
ultimate ly 'mystical' existence.
Some instances of a particlular media may merely 'incline' us to
consider something... bland books, poor television programs or vacuous
theatre productions, but there are some instances that inspire us and
drive us to better our existance, or in some cases to cause blight,
cruelty and ruinous events.... Language, for example, has allowed our
brains to extend far beyond the confines of our boney skulls and
enables us to communicate and share ideas. If you've ever been in the
presence of a great speaker, you will know instantly that words are
not merely emtpy sounds awaiting our interpretations, but are weighted
vehicles for the influencial dissemination of ideas, and are very
seldom 'neutral'.
So my point is this: the internet is not a neutral object awaiting our
interpretation, but is a rich and varied media that can influence you
.. it can shock, scare, amuse, frighten.... and more things than you
can find in a thesaurus or dictionary, to boot; and it is NOT guided
or limited by your own mind...
A Beowolf cluster of these? That's so 2 years ago... I'd love to see a NUMA-linked cluster of these! And I wonder how long it would take that cluster running GNOME under XFree86 to have Mozilla render this page nested at -1!
Seriously, I wonder how long it takes to boot. Every NUMA machine I've ever used took more than its fair share of time to boot... much more than a standard Unix server. It would be pretty funny if compiling the kernel turned out to be trivial compared to booting!