Slashdot Mirror
Linux Gains Support for NUMA
soosterh writes "CNet has an article about a NUMA patch from IBM. It says that the improvement adds some support in Linux for nonuniform memory access, or NUMA, a design for higher-end servers with many processors. Linus Torvalds, the original creator of the operating system and still its top authority, accepted the update this month into version 2.5, the current test version of the software."
I thought that I'd seen some other NUMA stuff in previous runs of 'make menuconfig'-- Can anyone explain what's already there and what this patch adds?
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
Transparently? Well, yes, from a programmatic point of view. Your old code will run fine. But not optimally. It would take different memory allocation algorithms to get optimum performance on a Hammer box. Hopefully, this will hape with that.
I've had this sig for three days.
You misunderstand the way Open Source works. Linux actually has perfect democracy - *anybody* can take charge. Anybody - even you - could fork the kernel any time you wanted to. Of course, until you show why your stream is better than the main stream, you'll be pretty lonely on your fork.
The only reason that Linus is still the controlling authority on the Linux kernel is that he is doing it pretty well. And he isn't without advice from others - there are hundreds of people only too willing to favour him with their advice.
Every functioning organisation needs a chief executive - someone who makes the final decision. Even when you have executive committees - and, informally, most Open Source projects do - someone still has to make the final decision, to jusdge what the consensus actually is.
Anybody can "call an election" on an Open Source project any time, by proposing a fork. That is much closer to perfect democracy, it seems to me, than one where you only choosw the Chief Exec every few years.
As it is, Linux is a roaring success with Linus in charge. It ain't broke. don't fix it.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
You underestimate the intelligence of Linus, he initially refused the NUMA patch as it affected performance on non NUMA systems. So the author of the patch got some help with it and the patch now works without hindering non NUMA systems.
Surely this is quality control at its finest? every project has its project manager. Everyone is free to write their own applications without Linus controlling them, he just looks after his project which happens to be the kernel. Without strict quality control the kernel would be a right old dogs dinner by now.