On Sun, Apr 01, 2012 at 12:19:25AM +0200, Lorenz Kolb wrote:

With that patchset in mind, I am working on a really huge patch,
which will greatly simplify the Linux kernel  for the real problem
of having that number of CPUs.

That patch will have a lot of changes all over the architectures, so
what will be the best way to post it? Should I split it architecture
dependend and into one generic part.

Currently it is a large blob of millions of changes, but will
greatly simplify the Linux kernel.

Perhaps a branch on a public git tree?  If you are doing what I suspect
you are, you will end up with a very large patch set.  ;-)

							Thanx, Paul

Regards,

Lorenz Kolb

Am 31.03.2012 23:21, schrieb Paul E. McKenney:

quoted

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 11:00:08PM +0200, Eric Dumazet wrote:

quoted

On Sun, 2012-04-01 at 00:33 +0800, Paul E. McKenney wrote:

quoted

Although there have been numerous complaints about the complexity of
parallel programming (especially over the past 5-10 years), the plain
truth is that the incremental complexity of parallel programming over
that of sequential programming is not as large as is commonly believed.
Despite that you might have heard, the mind-numbing complexity of modern
computer systems is not due so much to there being multiple CPUs, but
rather to there being any CPUs at all.  In short, for the ultimate in
computer-system simplicity, the optimal choice is NR_CPUS=0.

This commit therefore limits kernel builds to zero CPUs.  This change
has the beneficial side effect of rendering all kernel bugs harmless.
Furthermore, this commit enables additional beneficial changes, for
example, the removal of those parts of the kernel that are not needed
when there are zero CPUs.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney<redacted>
Reviewed-by: Thomas Gleixner<redacted>
---

Hmm... I believe you could go one step forward and allow negative values
as well. Antimatter was proven to exist after all.

Hint : nr_cpu_ids is an "int", not an "unsigned int"

Bonus: Existing bugs become "must have" features.

;-) ;-) ;-)

quoted

Of course there is no hurry and this can wait 365 days.

James Bottomley suggested imaginary numbers of CPUs some time back,
and I suppose there is no reason you cannot have fractional numbers of
CPUs, and perhaps irrational numbers as well.  Of course, these last two
would require use of floating-point arithmetic (or something similar)
in the kernel.  So I guess we have at several years worth.  Over to you
for the negative numbers.  ;-)

						Thanx, Paul

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