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I am about to compile an optimized Kernel for my new servers. I'm used to compiling kernels but not for this specification of machine - these servers are all Dual P4-Xeon 2.2GHz (512Kb cache) using Intel E7500 (Plumas) chipsets, ECC DDR RAM..

Finally. Some of these servers will be high-throughput number crunchers and I have been advised by the software vendor to switch off hyper-threading in the BIOS (which I have done) as their tests indicate it degrades compute intensive tasks. But one server will be a general purpose machine and from Intel's pages it sounds like hyper-threading would be good for this. Anyone have experience with this? Are there any Linux specific optimizations?

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-- Simon Oliver

I thought hyper-threading was unique to the 64-bit intels? I guess I'm wrong. That being the case, the below may be totally wrong. Anyway, I remember reading that hyper-threading is still buggy in the Linux kernel. (Maybe it is only buggy in the ia64 architecture.) Regardless, I would not enable it unless you want to spend some time at kernel.org making sure that you know what your doing. For lurkers: Hyperthreading is the ability to run multiple instructions inside a single cpu at the same time. Sort of like having multiple CPUs. Greg Freemyer Internet Engineer Deployment and Integration Specialist Compaq ASE - Tru64 Compaq Master ASE - SAN Architect The Norcross Group www.NorcrossGroup.com