Linux + bi-processor

spOOwn · Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 10:24 pm Post subject: Linux + bi-processor

I just have a simple question, is there many difference on Linux if you run with two processor ???

If there are users who has the chance to run on bi-proccessor, they must tell me your opinions :wink:

guero61 · l33t Joined: 14 Oct 2002 Posts: 811 Location: Behind you

Although the performance increase is not necessarily linear (2x performance for 2x processors), the increases are more than noticeable.

Even though not Linux, I'm running WinXP on a dual Pentium Pro-200 machine; not something you could do on just one. Linux is much the same -- you have much more processing power available to you.

If you buy a newer, faster processor, your machine goes faster. If you add another processor to your machine, it goes faster.

spOOwn · Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 8:17 am Post subject:

ok thanks....

if there are any others suggestions or documentation to read about bi-processor it could be helpful for me...

No one are running on Athlon MP on linux ??

which motherboard have i do buy for that ??

are the sofware on linux written for multi-processor ? or only a few of them use it ??

I known that linux currently work with multi-processor...

ronmon · Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 12:43 pm Post subject:

I am running two MP 1800+'s (actually they are XP's with the L5 bridge 'defogged') on an Asus A7M266-D. It uses the AMD760 chipset, which I think is still the only choice for dual MP support. Tyan makes a few motherboards that will do the job. Make sure to use ECC Registered RAM and a well-ventilated case.

Some software packages directly support SMP; ALSA, gimp, oggenc, etc. Of course gcc does also, which is handy in Gentoo since nearly everything is compiled from source. Mozilla builds for me in 38 minutes and a kernel build from make dep to modules_install takes less than 5 minutes with MAKEOPTS set to -j4.

But even if a program doesn't use both CPU's, when you run multiple apps you are less likely to have resource conflicts that cause sound skipping, a jumpy cursor or general lagging.

Configure your kernel with SMP and ACPI support (don't use APM). Apps that can use SMP usually detect it during the build process from you configured sources, if they linked to /usr/src/linux, without any special ./configure options.

slais-sysweb · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2002 Posts: 221 Location: London

I have been using Linux SMP since 1997. Multiprocessing is alway my choice for a new machine. The advantage of two processors come when there is more than one task running, a fairly common occurence with Linux. Its especially useful with Gentoo as you often have compilations running while using trhe machine for other tasks. (with SMP set MAKEOPTS="-j3" in /etc/make.conf this will considerably improve compile times.)
To get the maximum benefit you should also have plenty of memory including processor cache (I favour PPro and PIII with 512k L2) With 2*PIII 512k and 1536MB MAKEOPTS="-j4" is noticably faster when installing X.
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sysweb SLAIS UCL

wolf31o2 · Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 7:30 pm Post subject:

I run dual Pentium 3 chips under Gentoo. The difference between single and dual CPU is staggering. There is not a linear difference in speed, as stated earlier, but the responsiveness is improved greatly.

bhos13 · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2003 Posts: 20

http://www.2cpu.com

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