[ale] mosix clusters?

[Joseph A Knapka]

Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> 
> That's what I would assume as well.  I don't have the 'fu to know just
> how much context-switching overhead that would entail.  I do wonder,
> though, if there might be some "sweet spot" that takes advantage of the
> way the processes use the CPU/mobo architecture, what with instruction
> pipelining and L1/L2 cache.

That is a very interesting question. After thinking
about it a bit, I believe it's possible to have
multiple tasks running in such a way that CPU
cache invalidations and refreshes happen in a
particularly "good" sequence that will actually
allow each of several identical compute-bound processes 
to make progress more quickly when run simultaneously
than when run serially. However, I don't think (with
current kernel technology) that you can plan
for this, and in general it wouldn't happen. You'd
have to get lucky. If you got unlucky, which you'd
normally do, then everything would run slower
than in the serial case.

-- Joe
   "Put your hand inside the puppet head."
   -- They Might Be Giants, "Puppet Head"

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