Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 21 Feb 2003 19:44:23 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 21 Feb 2003 19:44:23 -0500 Received: from e34.co.us.ibm.com ([32.97.110.132]:11225 "EHLO e34.co.us.ibm.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 21 Feb 2003 19:44:22 -0500 Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 16:44:13 -0800 From: "Martin J. Bligh" To: Larry McVoy , Hanna Linder cc: lse-tech@lists.sf.et, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call Message-ID: <306820000.1045874653@flay> In-Reply-To: <20030222001618.GA19700@work.bitmover.com> References: <96700000.1045871294@w-hlinder> <20030222001618.GA19700@work.bitmover.com> X-Mailer: Mulberry/2.1.2 (Linux/x86) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1801 Lines: 37 > Ben is right. I think IBM and the other big iron companies would be > far better served looking at what they have done with running multiple > instances of Linux on one big machine, like the 390 work. Figure out > how to use that model to scale up. There is simply not a big enough > market to justify shoveling lots of scaling stuff in for huge machines > that only a handful of people can afford. That's the same path which > has sunk all the workstation companies, they all have bloated OS's and > Linux runs circles around them. In your humble opinion. Unfortunately, as I've pointed out to you before, this doesn't work in practice. Workloads may not be easily divisible amongst machines, and you're just pushing all the complex problems out for every userspace app to solve itself, instead of fixing it once in the kernel. The fact that you were never able to do this before doesn't mean it's impossible, it just means that you failed. > In terms of the money and in terms of installed seats, the small Linux > machines out number the 4 or more CPU SMP machines easily 10,000:1. > And with the embedded market being one of the few real money makers > for Linux, there will be huge pushback from those companies against > changes which increase memory footprint. And the profit margin on the big machines will outpace the smaller machines by a similar ratio, inverted. The high-end space is where most of the money is made by the Linux distros, by selling products like SLES or Advanced Server to people who can afford to pay for it. M. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/