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NASA Installs Linux Supercomputer
unassimilatible writes: "Federal Computer Week reports that NASA plans to study the ocean's future with the help of the world's first supercomputer of its kind to run on the Linux operating system. The new supercomputer -- an SGI AltixT 3000 single-system image supercomputer -- has been installed at the space agency's Ames Research Center in California."
SGI's Altix handles up to 64 processors on a Linux kernel using the patches they release as opensource. As SGI hacks away at their bigmem and numa patches, they'll be able to handle more and more processors. The plan is to eventually graft enough IRIX technology to support just as many processors on Altix as they do with MIPS processors in Origin with IRIX.
Even if you aren't a fan of Itanium2, Linux, or NUMA, these patches are bringing some nifty high-end tech to the free software arena.
Don't know if this is what SGI is using, but the status of NUMA in the kernel and associated patches for it is shown here.
The thing that is special about the NASA computer is that it is a single image system and not really some cluster type thing. Mostly people say that Linux 2.4 scales well up to 8 processors, but this system has 256 processors.
/proc/interrupts' doesn't work if you have 512 CPUs in your system. Frankly when I saw that I thought it was a joke, but I guess it must be real if they already have paying customers.
SGI is working on scaling the kernel to even more processors. For example, Erik Jacobson from SGI recently noticed that 'cat