[Beowulf] 8p 16 core x86_64 systems

["C. Bergström"]

On 08/13/14 01:10 AM, Joshua Mora wrote:
> Certainly my assumption/interpretation has been "what is the availability of
> the cheapest and largest SMP solution with full coherence in hardware that you
> can build".
> Notice I mention hardware based coherence since there are software based
> solutions available as well.
> If you need just plenty of cores at the highest core count density that you
> can get with small memory footprint per OS_instance/core(for instance, for
> consolidation/virtualization reasons), then you do not need coherence and a
> much wider range of solutions are available that can use other
> interconnects/fabrics.
Is consolidation/virtualization really applicable at all to HPC? I 
thought virtualbox/vmware and all other friends don't allow direct 
access to the x86 extensions. Disabling this, the overhead or any layer 
on top I think would cause unacceptable levels of performance hit. 
(Someone please correct me if I'm wrong) The closest thing I can think 
which would play nice would be Solaris zones. (Which allow fine grained 
control of resources, but don't hide/limit the hw level capability)

I'm curious to see what Doug had in mind..