Re: 32-bit process ids (was: Re: idea to enhance get_pid())

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine]

> According to the kernel patch made by the people at Cluster
> Infrastructure ( http://ci-linux.sourceforge.net/ ), today 
> it is clear that the upper 16 bits of the pid are used for the node
> number. 

This is the one thing I let through back in 1984. Nixdorff wanted to use
parts of the processID for processorID. Now I don't have my authors' copy
of XPG/1 CAE anymore, but I still have a lasting sense of chagrin that as
trivially exhausted resource as a pid had bits shaved off for mid-80s SMP
machines. Granted, our pid_t of the time was 16 bits, and an Intel HyperCube
made a big dent in the remaining bits-for-pid'ing, and current pid_t's on
32-bit boxen is is 32 bits, and MPP boxes are few and far between -- but
really large clusters are possible.

$.02

Eric