Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 4 Dec 2001 15:51:23 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 4 Dec 2001 15:49:36 -0500 Received: from staff.staff.osogrande.net ([129.121.5.11]:36106 "HELO staff.nm.org") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Tue, 4 Dec 2001 15:48:41 -0500 Date: 4 Dec 2001 13:48:34 -0700 Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 13:48:34 -0700 (MST) From: Todd Underwood To: "M. Edward Borasky" cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Over 4-way systems considered harmful :-) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org folx, although i agree with the sentiment expressed below, i beg to differ... On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, M. Edward Borasky wrote: > Sure, the military guys would *love* to have a petaflop engine, but > they're gonna build 'em anyway and quite probably not bother to contribute > their kernel source on this mailing list. *Commercial* applications for > supercomputers of this level are few and far between. the CPlant (http://www.cs.sandia.gov/cplant/) system software (currently built on top of Linux 2.2 but it's working now on 2.4 as well) is Open Source (GPL). CPlant is built by Sandia National Labs (which could be interpreted as "the military guys" is is currently one of the largest Linux-based supercomputers in the world. The source for it is publicly available and gives some interesting insight to what happens when you try to scale beyond the "traditional" 32 or 64 processor cluster. Additionally, the same systems software is being used in at least one big commercial application (for processing genetic information). my point here is not that building huge SMP machine makes sense (obviously, for reasons that have been repeatedly reexplained by others including Larry McVoy, it doesn't). my point is just that many parts of the national security aparatus are playing well in the Linux kernel development space these days and it's foolish to write them off. todd underwood, vp & cto oso grande technologies, inc. todd@osogrande.com "Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin - 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/