On Sun, 2002-06-02 at 05:40, Peter VanCampen wrote:
Hello SuSE'ers I am probably going to a two pentium system soon; so I would like to ask you to share your SMP experiences and advise.
Does the main memory recomendations increase? Can one allocate work or apps to the individual processors. Can the processors share the NIC and audio sub-systems w/o problems? What other good questions haven't I asked?
Are there any serious pitfalls or novice errors I should be aware of? I DO have a general knowledge of multi-processing going back to IBM MP Mainframes in the 80's
I normally say to others, to try out SMP machines, especially now, with the affordablility of PIII/Athlons to experience the smoothness of Linux. Choices for me are simply: a) Memory, memory & memory Don't skimp here. With 1 Gig worth, you'll be full of reserves. b) Awareness of heat problems, and ventilation. Dont use smallish to midsize cases. Get the biggest , so to allow more air circulation and ease of IN/OUT of your busy hands. Push slightly more cold air into case with a 120mm fan. Pull out hot air with an extra 90mm fan or so. c) Try using 10K SCSI drives or the latest ATA100 7.2K IDE ones. Dont bother with 15k SCSI yet,(Too pricey) or ATA133 IDE (No great advantage yet) d) The most important, IMO.... Get a very heavyduty Power Supply to deal with those 3.3V and 5.0V rail dips. You wont regret the extra juices. e) Install any recent SuSE Professional version. Now, about the individual time-slicing on each CPU for your programs, I know ,it is said to be possible. I dont really have the know-how. And as far NIC and Audio concerns, I haven't come across any, bar the flakiness of some onboard audio card stuff. Go on !! Test drive a SMP machine. -- Kemdi IN_SuSE_d Since 5.2 123792 of counter.li.org ICQ:112290572