Red Hat on Friday began testing support for forthcoming dual-core processors in its first update to its Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or RHEL, software.
Red Hat tests dual-core support
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on his home built linux-from-scratch based JimBob LinuxOS v12 with Linux kernel 2.6.12-pre3
These announcements from open source companies just don’t have the feel of excitement of a closed source company making big announcements – like: Apple begins testing Tiger on dual-core PowerPCs or Microsoft tests Windows Server 2005 dual-core EMT64s or Sun begins testing Solaris 10 on dual-core AMD64s.
You know what’s funny, though?
Linux has been being tested on dual core EMT64’s by Intel for quite a while, and dual core Opterons by AMD. Oh, and it has been running dual core PowerPCs in production for years and years.
So yeah, this isn’t a very big deal for Linux. I guess for Microsoft it is something new, though.
These announcements from open source companies just don’t have the feel of excitement of a closed source company making big announcements – like: Apple begins testing Tiger on dual-core PowerPCs or Microsoft tests Windows Server 2005 dual-core EMT64s or Sun begins testing Solaris 10 on dual-core AMD64s.
You’re really trying to start a flame war aren’t you. Moving on…
How is dual core different from any other dual cpu system? From the software’s point of view, of course. I thought you could just run a SMP kernel with no problems, is that wrong?
You’re really trying to start a flame war aren’t you. Moving on…
No my point is that this isn’t news. It would be news if Redhat was the ONLY distro to support Dual Core (but that’s not possible in open source linux). What would be newsworthy is if Linus managed to implement X in kernel space.
But you’re right, Dual Core == Hyper Threading == SMP from the OS’s point of view. You do cat /proc/cpuinfo and you see two processors.
”
No my point is that this isn’t news. It would be news if Redhat was the ONLY distro to support Dual Core”
Well if you think of “support” as commercially supported through SLA’s this is indeed something important. However if you think of support as “works” then its just a kernel capability.
“These announcements from open source companies just don’t have the feel of excitement of a closed source company making big announcements – like: Apple begins testing Tiger on dual-core PowerPCs or Microsoft tests Windows Server 2005 dual-core EMT64s or Sun begins testing Solaris 10 on dual-core AMD64s. ”
actually I think news.com pretty much picked up a RHEL 4 U1 beta announcement and made it news
Here it is
https://www.redhat.com/archives/nahant-beta-list/2005-April/msg00000…
You assertion that the PR department of open source companies arent as big as Apple or MS is indeed true but I for one would consider that as a advantage 🙂
Well, I guess I misunderstood you. I don’t think this is news either, and I don’t think it would be any more exciting if MS or Apple made the announcement instead.
Has processor affinity handling to be rethought?
Carsten
But you’re right, Dual Core == Hyper Threading == SMP from the OS’s point of view. You do cat /proc/cpuinfo and you see two processors
Wrong. Dual-core == SMP. Dual-core != HyperThreading/SMT.
And Intel dual-core != AMD dual-core, just like AMD SMP != Intel SMP.
But you’re right, Dual Core == Hyper Threading == SMP from the OS’s point of view. You do cat /proc/cpuinfo and you see two processors
Wrong. Dual-core == SMP. Dual-core != HyperThreading/SMT.
And Intel dual-core != AMD dual-core, just like AMD SMP != Intel SMP.
Actually
Dual core != SMP != Hyperthreading/SMT.
In a NUMA aware environment like the Opteron, having two CPU cores (on the same node) may behave radically different then two CPUs. (each in its own memory node)
G.
Just to clarify, does that mean that Linux kernel need some modifications to run on dual-core (and take advantage of it) ? or is current SMP kernel will just do it ?
Can you please continue explaining differences between SMP, SMT and all the other stuff please? Interesting stuff. My professor fail to make the difference clear. Thank you.
so i wonder if CentOS 4.1 will get this, if it’s going into RHEL update 1….?
What’s the deal, just handle it like smp, what am i missing