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From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
To: Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk>
Cc: The Eunuchs Historic Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Distributed systems, was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question"
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2020 10:42:56 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200209184256.GD21264@mcvoy.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200208171837.15CA62215C@orac.inputplus.co.uk>

On Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 05:18:37PM +0000, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Rob Pike wrote:
> > I am convinced that large-scale modern compute centers would be run
> > very differently, with fewer or at least lesser problems, if they were
> > treated as a single system rather than as a bunch of single-user
> > computers ssh'ed together.
> 
> This reminds me of Western Digital's recent OmniXtend.  It takes a
> programmable Ethernet switch and changes the protocol: Ethernet becomes
> OmniXtend.  It's a cache-coherency protocol the allows CPUs, custom
> ASICs, FPGAs, GPUS, ML accelerators, ... to each hang off an 802.3 PHY
> and share one memory pool.
> https://blog.westerndigital.com/omnixtend-fabric-innovation-with-risc-v/
> 
> It might be a step towards a room of racks being marshalled as a single
> computer.

Or it might be a giant step backwards in terms of memory latency.

      reply	other threads:[~2020-02-09 18:43 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-01-18  6:15 Andrew Warkentin
2020-01-18  6:25 ` Rob Pike
2020-01-18  7:30   ` [TUHS] [TUHS -> COFF] " Andrew Warkentin
2020-01-18 11:55   ` [TUHS] " Álvaro Jurado
2020-01-20 17:05     ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2020-01-18 20:24   ` Adam Thornton
2020-01-18 20:40     ` Toby Thain
2020-01-20 20:19   ` Clem Cole
2020-02-08 17:18   ` Ralph Corderoy
2020-02-09 18:42     ` Larry McVoy [this message]

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