Idle question about multi-core processors

[Jonas Trollvik]

Speaking of that,
How long do you think it will be until the BGL can be removed from the
largest subsystems and we will see the real benefit on SMP systems in
DragonFly?
-Jonas
On 12/1/06, Matthew Dillon <dillon at apollo.backplane.com> wrote:
:> In any case, it looks to me like the mass-market may be supporting SMP
:> mobo's much sooner than I suspected.  And, I suspect that DragonFly may
:> provide much better performance on SMP hardware than many other OS's.
:
:I thought dual-core was SMP, was that wrong of me?
:
:--
:Erik Wikström
   It is SMP, definitely.  If one were to ask the question... how many
   cpu's is enough?  The answer is probably around four for any general
   purpose computer.
   The biggest advantage a GPU has is its ability to process work in
   parallel, either with parallel processing elements or with pipelined
   elements.  Because of this a GPU can do far more work then a CPU
   within the bounds of its capabilities.
   GPU makers have recently started trying to incorporate general purpose
   computing elements into GPUs, but I think this effort is going to be
   fairly short lived as consumer computers start to get more cores.  My
   guess is that GPUs will evolve better GPU<->CPU ABIs instead and most
   of the supervisory workload will shift back to the CPUs.  Pretty soon
   game makers will be able to *rely* on consumer machines having 2 or more
   cores in them.  There won't be any more single-core consumer machines
   two years from now.
                                       -Matt
                                       Matthew Dillon
                                       <dillon at backplane.com>