RE: [PATCH][2.4] generic cluster APIC support for systems with m

[Van Maren, Kevin]

> On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 06:04:55PM -0800, James Cleverdon wrote:
> >>> A generic patch should also support Unisys' new box, the ES7000 or
> >>> some such.
> 
> On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 08:00:50AM +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> >> That box needs more changes than just the apic setup.  Unfortunately
> >> unisys thinks they shouldn't send their patches to lkml, but when you
see
> >> them e.g. in the suse tree it's a bit understandable that they don't
want
> >> anyone to really see their mess :)

No need to sugar-coat anything :-)

Natalie is the engineer who added support for the ES7000 to Linux.
Fortunately she is in the cube next to me.

She has sent the patches to SuSe/United Linux, and is in the final process
of testing them on 2.5.5x before submitting them to LKML for comment.

> >> And btw, the box isn't that new, but three years ago or so when they
first
> >> showed it on cebit they even refused to talk about linux due to their
> >> restrictive agreements with Microsoft..
>
> On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 03:24:01AM -0800, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> > Kevin, you're the only lkml-posting contact point I know of within
Unisys.
> > Is there any chance you could flag down some of the ia32 crew there for
> > some commentary on this stuff? (or do so yourself if you're in it)

I mostly work on our 16-32p IA64 machines.  Natalie or someone else will
have to comment on the clustered-apic code.

I do know that a lot of the code for the ES7000 is optional, and only
required to support value-added management functionality, which is
especially useful if you are running more than one OS instance on the
machine (it supports 8 fully-independent partitions).

Also, as a clarification, our 32-processor systems are NOT NUMA: there
is a full non-blocking crossbar to memory.  So clustered APIC support
should not be dependant on NUMA.

Kevin