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Linux May Need a Rewrite Beyond 48 Cores

An anonymous reader writes "There is interesting new research coming out of MIT which suggests current operating systems are struggling with the addition of more cores to the CPU. It appears that the problem, which affects the available memory in a chip when multiple cores are working on the same chunks of data, is getting worse and may be hitting a peak somewhere in the neighborhood of 48 cores, when entirely new operating systems will be needed, the report says. Luckily, we aren't anywhere near 48 cores and there is some time left to come up with a new Linux (Windows?)."

3 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Only Linux? by jpmorgan · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Probably because Microsoft rewrote the NT kernel for Windows 7, to eliminate the kinds of problems this study discovered:

    http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/windows-7-to-scale-to-256-processors/1687

  2. Re:Only Linux? by Jorl17 · · Score: 1, Redundant

    No, their rewrite is also subject to to this issue. Go publicize Windows somewhere else.

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  3. Re:Original Source and Actual Paper by wastedlife · · Score: 1, Redundant

    You've been misinformed, the NT executive is still alive and kicking:

    MinWin is not, in and of itself a kernel, but rather a set of components that includes both the Windows NT Executive and several other components that Russinovich has described as "Cutler's NT".[16]

    It's all still NT, Windows 7 is just NT version 6.1. I guess "6.1" doesn't have the same ring to it as a whole number. Will Windows 8 be NT 6.2, or will they move the version up to NT 7.0?

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