Intel will demo massively multicore *x86* CPU chips next year. If each linode runs as it's own process as I understand could be done in the future, we should all see CPU contention drop when servers start using these chips.

James

From http://www.computerworld.com/action/art ... ws_ts_head

“Intel Corp. is developing a programmable processor with many cores that is compatible with the x86 instruction set and capable of performing 1 teraflop, a senior company executive said Tuesday at the Intel Developer Forum here.”

"We'll be able to demonstrate it in 2008," Gelsinger said.

For many years Sun were trailing in CPU power with their SPARC chips. But all of a sudden they seem to have taken a massive jump forward; multi-core multi-threads (effectively the same as Intel hyperthreading)... A Niagra chip can have 8 cores, each of which have 4 threads... looks like 32 CPUs to the OS. With recent firmware updates to some of the Sun boxes, each of those "CPUs" can run an independent LDOM... hardware virtualised machines. The Niagara 2 chip will have more cores and more threads.

When did Sun take the lead? I know I'm surprised!

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

Personally I'd take Sun hardware over a beige box anyday.

Hmmm... How much do they charge per SMP teraflop, do you know?

James