All you then need is to use wireless ethernet and you all you need is a way of getting power into the device.
I'm now wondering if it'd be possible to build a system where you'd have re-charagable batteries powering the in-a-can PCs... which are re-charged by putting the can in the microwave for a couple of minutes
Node3 offline to recharge
Node3 recharging Node3 going around and around Node3 fatal error - out of cheese on popcorn re-do from start.
A quick look at the right part of the Solaris x86 HCL shows a number of machines with more than 4 CPUs which have been certified as working with Solaris on Intel:
Hitachi HA8000/380 UWRAID (8 CPUs, PII-Xeon-450) - one of three Hitachi machines of this size
NCR WorldMark 4380 (8 CPUs, PP-200 1 MB)
NEC Express5800-HX6100 (6 CPUs, PP-200)
Zenith Data Systems Express5800-HX6100 (6 CPUs, PP-200)
Intel OCPRF100 (8 CPUs, PIII-Xeon-550)
One of the reasons why there aren't more is that there aren't that many x86 motherboards with support than more than four CPUs.
That said, I'd prefer to use Sun hardware for more than four CPUs anyway - there is so much more to a system than the number of CPUs in the box after all.
It should be noted that in my article I didn't say that I'd only use x86 machines for SMP. There was also no mention of "heavy duty SMP" either. After all, when people talk about SMP on x86 systems, its rarely in the context of "heavy duty":) Also, given the context of the original article - the use of Unix as servers in an office environment. Unless your office is very large or you're doing some large scale calculations or database work you're not going to need large scale SMP machines. You can make use of relatively low end x86-based machines to perform the day-to-day file and print serving - I wouldn't want a rather expensive 64 way Sun machine sitting idle doing nothing more than running samba.
IMHO I'd rather engineer systems which have a number of smaller machines than go for one large machine if possible. That said, this could be achieved using domains with the E10000 (or the domain software on a number of smaller machines).
Personally I'd add Solaris on x86 to that list as well. As I said earlier on in this thread, I'm currently running Solaris on a five year old dual P90 machine. Naturally this is running the x86 version of Solaris. The Solaris HCL lists x86 based machines with up to 6 CPUs and has done since Solaris 2.5.1 (which was when I started to use Solaris on x86 SMP machines).
There aren't that many differences between Solaris on x86 and Sparc when it comes down to it. Apart from the lowest level things like device drivers, certain parts of the kernel and certain commands which are very much architecture dependant, Solaris has the same code for both Sparc and x86.
That dual P90 machine I've got is also handling mail, news, DNS, web, ftp, SMB (file and printing), NFS serving, CD burning and the normal work I throw at it (ie HTML generation and some image processing) without too many problems. Whilst I'm thinking of upgrading this old dual P90 with just 64Mb of memory and a single Adaptec HBA is happily handling this load. Even after I add a couple of new machines I'll still be keeping the machine around as it'll have lots of now empty disk space for me to fill up:)
er... I've got a dual-P90 machine which has been happily running Solaris for SMP work for about five years or so now. It uses both CPUs quite effectively as well.
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All you then need is to use wireless ethernet and you all you need is a way of getting power into the device.
I'm now wondering if it'd be possible to build a system where you'd have re-charagable batteries powering the in-a-can PCs... which are re-charged by putting the can in the microwave for a couple of minutes
A quick look at the right part of the Solaris x86 HCL shows a number of machines with more than 4 CPUs which have been certified as working with Solaris on Intel:
One of the reasons why there aren't more is that there aren't that many x86 motherboards with support than more than four CPUs.
That said, I'd prefer to use Sun hardware for more than four CPUs anyway - there is so much more to a system than the number of CPUs in the box after all.
It should be noted that in my article I didn't say that I'd only use x86 machines for SMP. There was also no mention of "heavy duty SMP" either. After all, when people talk about SMP on x86 systems, its rarely in the context of "heavy duty" :) Also, given the context of the original article - the use of Unix as servers in an office environment. Unless your office is very large or you're doing some large scale calculations or database work you're not going to need large scale SMP machines. You can make use of relatively low end x86-based machines to perform the day-to-day file and print serving - I wouldn't want a rather expensive 64 way Sun machine sitting idle doing nothing more than running samba.
IMHO I'd rather engineer systems which have a number of smaller machines than go for one large machine if possible. That said, this could be achieved using domains with the E10000 (or the domain software on a number of smaller machines).
>Solaris on SPARC
Personally I'd add Solaris on x86 to that list as well. As I said earlier on in this thread, I'm currently running Solaris on a five year old dual P90 machine. Naturally this is running the x86 version of Solaris. The Solaris HCL lists x86 based machines with up to 6 CPUs and has done since Solaris 2.5.1 (which was when I started to use Solaris on x86 SMP machines).
There aren't that many differences between Solaris on x86 and Sparc when it comes down to it. Apart from the lowest level things like device drivers, certain parts of the kernel and certain commands which are very much architecture dependant, Solaris has the same code for both Sparc and x86.
That dual P90 machine I've got is also handling mail, news, DNS, web, ftp, SMB (file and printing), NFS serving, CD burning and the normal work I throw at it (ie HTML generation and some image processing) without too many problems. Whilst I'm thinking of upgrading this old dual P90 with just 64Mb of memory and a single Adaptec HBA is happily handling this load. Even after I add a couple of new machines I'll still be keeping the machine around as it'll have lots of now empty disk space for me to fill up :)
>If they said that AIX or Solaris
er... I've got a dual-P90 machine which has been happily running Solaris for SMP work for about five years or so now. It uses both CPUs quite effectively as well.