Re: Dual Processor Failover Support?
- From: "Venger" <venger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 21:51:43 GMT
"Brendan512" <Brendan512@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:E8B160D7-D372-44B4-9588-6B8F932AF586@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi, I'm trying to evaluate the pros and cons of a dual-core system vs. a
dual
processor system. With dual processors, if one processor somehow failed,
would the machine keep running or is this BSOD territory?
Bingo...threads are handed to both processors, and if one craters, it will
take the system with it. Depending on the nature of the CPU failure, after
bugcheck, the system might reboot solely on the good processor, if the BIOS
can detect the failure and remove that CPU from use.
I read somewhere
that back in the NT4 days if the secondary processor failed Windows would
keep chugging along since no critical services would be running on it.
If you load a uniprocessor kernel and ran it against just one processor, you
could of course lose the unused processor... if the one you were on bailed,
you could theoretically come up on the other, good processor that the BIOS
still had, but that doesn't sound like what you are asking for. You might
have read something about a Cluster... which will fail services based on a
heartbeat and shared config...
Processor failure is SO extremely rare, it should be about 50th on your list
of concerns. For every one processor you will lose, you'll lose at least 500
hard drives, power supplies, VRMs, fans, memory sticks, motherboards...
For evaluating dual-core versus dual-CPU, the dual-core has a higher heat
load to deal with for it's single cooler, but it's just one fan to go bad,
versus 2 in a dual CPU system. All else being equal, a dual-CPU has twice
the chances of failure due to fan/VRM malfunction than a dual-core CPU.
I'm
not really familiar with how the whole modern multi-threading deal works,
but
it seems to me that there isn't really a "primary" or "secondary"
processor
anymore.
While you can set CPU affinity, I know of know x86 platform that supports
CPU failover. Some mini-mainframes had/have it...
Venger
.
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