When will the press get it?

I found this piece on IBM efforts to make a 64 XEON server

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/servers/0,39020363,39119100,00.htm

Bradicich acknowledges that there are challenges in producing such a large system -- including building support into Windows and Linux, neither of which are suited for 64-processor systems today.

This entire article seems to ignore the hardest part of building big hardware, its not making it run, its making it run when parts in it fail, if you have 64 cpu’s working 24/7 sooner or later one is going to die. The hardware and the OS has to handle this, to my knowledge neither Linux or Windows will handle this event gracefully. Most Likely It will come crashing to a halt taking all unsaved data with it. The only hope is for the machine to reboot and come back to life quickly. But of course there will be losses.. and the bigger the server the more the loss. Do you really want to explain to the CEO why you had a ½ of down time yesterday because the machine rebooted during peek sales hours.

More than just hardware limits 64-processor Xeon systems, though, said Illuminata analyst Jonathan Eunice. "Bigger systems are needed for big databases and transaction and messaging hubs, but they also need a whole scaled-up environment, not just lots of processors. This is where the 32-bit ecosystem peters out."

Is it just me, or all the tasks that mentioned, are usually IO bound? 64 cpus or 128 doesn’t matter if there is no data to process the machine spins it wheels. Is 32 bits really enough? I know people that have 4GB files on their desktop. Sun and SGI have been doing 64 bit workstations for over 10 years, yet IBM want to sell 32 bit servers as a solution? Even apple has 64 bit cpu’s in there desktops.

Unisys, which like IBM is a company with a long history of developing mainframes and other high-end computers, agrees with Big Blue that multiprocessor Xeon machines are a good idea. It has sold a 32-Xeon server line called the ES7000 since 2000.

In the end, perhaps both IBM and Unisys, are just trying to preserve there money making part of there business the mainframe, mainframes do a couple of things well IO, and staying up no matter what happens, that is what server is supposed to do.

If you want to look at servers and OS that can scale to 64 cpus and more today you may want to look at Sun and Solaris, they support both Sparc and AMD64 solutions. By scaling I just don’t mean in software but in maintainability as well. Sun's solutions also use off the shelf software unlike mainframes. If you want Open Source, Open Solaris is coming.