Re: help offered

["Greg Chesson" <greg@xtp.engr.sgi.com>]

One definition of OS scalability that I have not seen
in general use is this:

        an OS scales to S number of processors if all S processors
        can be executing in the kernel at the same time.

An OS that scales to S active kernels can usually operate hardware
with P processors, where P > S.  A system for 1P should
be able to handle 2P with a little work.  I expect a lightweight kernel
like Linux to handle 4p with a few locks if on average only one of the
4p is in the kernel.  I'd suggest that the LInux kernel is at present
(1S, 4p) or maybe (1.5S, 4P).

g

-- 
Greg Chesson