Re: Threads FAQ entry incomplete

[Charles Cazabon]

Rodrigo Ventura <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> BTW, I have a question: Can the availability of dual-CPU boards for intel
> and amd processors, rather then tri- or quadra-CPU boards, be explained with
> the fact that the performance degrades significantly for three or more CPUs?
> Or is there a technological and/or comercial reason behind?

Commercial reasons.  Cost per motherboard/chipset goes way up as the number of
CPUs supported goes up.  For each CPU that a chipset supports, it has to add a
lot of pins/lands, and chipsets are already typically land-limited.
Motherboard trace complexity (and therefore number of layers) goes up.  Add to
that that the potential market goes down as CPUs goes up.

You can buy 4-, 8-, and 16-way motherboards for Intel CPUs (don't know about
more).  But the 16-way ones will cost as much as a house.

Charles
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Cazabon                            <[e-mail]>
GPL'ed software available at:  http://www.qcc.sk.ca/~charlesc/software/
Any opinions expressed are just that -- my opinions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------