One of the more recent comparisons of Linux against NT said exactly the
opposite...
That Linux scales VERY well (2.4.x) with more than two processors, and
that the task scheduler IS more efficient than NT...
Kernels prior to 2.4 had a problem that was hampering the scheduler.
As far as "linear increase". This is probably true of ANY multi-cpu
environment, including dual CPU's.
You'll loose a little performance to OS, RAM and I/O overhead (it takes
a lot to keep all those processors busy!) but multi-threaded
applications will behave all that much better.
I wouldn't sweat it...
-JMS
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf
Of Julia A. Case
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 5:02 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [expert] SMP systems (continued)
Thanks to all that sent me email about multi cpu mother boards... One
more question... I've used linux quite a bit with dual CPU systems, but
I'm thinking about a motherboard that supports 4 CPU's... I've heard
rumor that you just don't get a linear increase in computing power when
you go over 2 CPU's... That the task scheduler doesn't make efficent
use
of the extra CPU's... Also is it possible to do something like dedicate
a single CPU to just doing filesystem I/O? That would make using
software RAID almost as fast as using a hardware RAID controller.
Julia
--
[ Julia Anne Case ] [ Ships are safe inside the harbor, ]
[Programmer at large] [ but is that what ships are really for. ]
[ Admining Linux ] [ To thine own self be true. ]
[ Windows/WindowsNT ] [ Fair is where you take your cows to be judged. ]
