Re: Sharing RAM over the 'net (was Re: Process Migration on Linux - Impossible?)
Larry McVoy (lm@cobaltmicro.com)
Thu, 02 Oct 1997 13:40:20 -0700
: At 01:09 AM 10/3/97 +1000, Darren Reed wrote:
: >So why can't you share the memory ?
: >
: >Something pmap calling pmap on another box, over the network, and so on.
: >
: >Of course this would be real slow over ethernet, but what about if you
: >have a host which has multiple cpu's with dedicated memory for each ?
: >
: >I think in those sort of instances sharing memory over some sort of
: >"network interface" is an interesting idea and process/thread migration
: >could be very sexy. But perhaps Linux cannot support that without huge
: >rewrites ?
:
: Cellular IRIX does exactly this. The big problem is, if one CPU fails or
: one network link fails, you (potentially) lose every single process on the
: network of systems.
Cellular IRIX doesn't exist in production form.
The "network" under Cellualar IRIX is 800MB/sec, full duplex, with 100ns
latencies per hop.
Even with those sorts of numbers, IRIX is having a tough time scaling on
that machine.
It's ill advised to go after this w/ regular networks.