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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 19:21:18 +0100 (BST)
From: Ruth Ivimey-Cook <Ruth.Ivimey-Cook@ivimey.org>
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To: "Randy.Dunlap" <rddunlap@osdl.org>
cc: Robert Love <rml@tech9.net>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        <akpm@zip.com.au>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] CONFIG_NR_CPUS, redux
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33L2.0206111102110.2449-100000@dragon.pdx.osdl.net>
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On Tue, 11 Jun 2002, Randy.Dunlap wrote:

>On 11 Jun 2002, Robert Love wrote:
>
>| Here are the defaults I picked:
>|
>| CONFIG_NR_CPUS=32: i386, mips, parisc, ppc, sparc
>
>I don't know what is "typical" for non-x86, but for x86, why not
>use something more like a 'typical' NR_CPUS for SMP, like 8 (?)...
>why still waste all of that memory?

Perhaps it's just because I'm coming in late, but I cannot understand why
NR_CPUS cannot be as low as 4 by default, for all archs, and then in the
kernel boot messages, should more be found than is configured for a message is
emitted to say "reconfigure your kernel", and continue with the number it was
configured for. I personally only rarely see 2-way boxes, 4-way is pretty
rare, and anything more must surely count as very specialized.

Let the defaults be reasonable for 99% of users (IMO 99.9%), and let the rest 
have to think about config options...

Ruth

-- 
Ruth Ivimey-Cook
Software engineer and technical writer.

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