Very interesting paper: An Analysis of Linux Scalability to many Cores

[Andre Oppermann]

Just saw the link to a very interesting paper on SMP scalability.
A very good read and highly relevant for our efforts as well.  In
certain areas we may already fare better, in others we still have
some work to do.

An Analysis of Linux Scalability to many Cores

ABSTRACT
  This paper analyzes the scalability of seven system applications
  (Exim, memcached, Apache, PostgreSQL, gmake, Psearchy, and MapReduce)
  running on Linux on a 48-core computer. Except for gmake, all
  applications trigger scalability bottlenecks inside a recent Linux
  kernel. Using mostly standard parallel programming techniques—
  this paper introduces one new technique, sloppy counters—
  these bottlenecks can be removed from the kernel or avoided by
  changing the applications slightly. Modifying the kernel required
  in total 3002 lines of code changes. A speculative conclusion from
  this analysis is that there is no scalability reason to give up on
  traditional operating system organizations just yet.

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/linux:osdi10.pdf

-- 
Andre