[Gllug] Crashes (owing to the heatwave?)

[Jon Masters]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Chris Bell wrote:

>    I am definitely not an expert, but I thought that boxes with multiple
> processors, (and also multiple boxes working together?) divided the work
> into blocks.

Skip the next two paragraphs to get to the point.

The blocks are termed processes and threads where a thread is also known
as a Lightweight Process or context. The scheduler will run regularly
either through the standard timer or under certain other conditions -
processors are assigned a context for a time slice, or quantum.

In non Monolithic environments where a Microkernel is in use then you have
a lot more to contend with as you potentially have to reschedule every
time a message is passed from one system task to another - this is why you
will find that commercial Microkernel-like systems such as Mac OS X really
have a unified address space kernel. Microsoft did some similar tricks
between Windows NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 by moving the win32 stuff in to kernel.

<etc. ad nausea etc.>

The question I had more specifically related to how the S390 handles
parititions as in mainframes such as this it is possible to create virtual
machine partitions and run a different Operating System image within each.
Sun Microsystems are also beginning to use this concept more and more.

There are various technical issues with removing a CPU during runtime and
I asked as I would like to know how it is done in the S390/Linux case.

Jon.


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