LSE (Linux Scalability Effort) Technical Meeting on 12/8/00
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Attendees:
IBM: Tim Wright, Hans Tannenberger, Ken Rozendal, Ray Bryant
Intel: John B. Hansen, Luann Guleserian
SGI: John Wright
Meeting Charter:
This bi-weekly meeting is:
- Technical Focus
- Status Updates
- Inject other agenda items by sending email to mailing list.
Next Meeting is 12/22.
Agenda: TBD
Bridge numbers and Pass Code are same.
Call 1-888-790-7156
Passcode:85875
Confirmation #: 8858784
AR (Action Required) Summary from 12/8
John Wright to send notes from 11/7 (last meeting) to
John.b.hansen@intel.com and luann.guleserian@intel.com
Luann to Add John Wright to mailing list. Send to Tim/distrib when done.
jwright@engr.sgi.com
John Hansen to send minutes to John Wright for posting to the mailing list.
John Wright: need lse-announce mailing list. John to set that up
for announcements and non-technical and things that come along.
Its usually low volume and allows lurking.
John Wright: think about putting a welcome statement on the Web site.
Agenda - Just Status Updates today.....
Minutes
Tim Wright's Update=09
Mike Kravetz did a grand job on initial call for participation
on scalability. Call for participation. on scheduler
Had 10 people come back with interest - not bad.
internal work on benchmarking scheduler...
Priority-based gives modest results on 8way
Multi-Queue gives great results on 8way system
publishing the benchmarks for that
ChatRoomC - internal benchmark working on baseline for it.
Scalability and Performance Roadmap - working on
John Hansen & Steve Carbonari visited IBM earlier this week.
Publishing another rev to Scalability & Performance Roadmap
on Monday
JW: wanted to see the roadmap also. NOTE: SGI also has
a roadmap for their efforts.
Put roadmaps on Sourceforge yet?
Dan Frye wants it out on SF (contentious discussion is good).
All other projects have done this. Its only way to achieve
participation. dont' want things behind closed doors.
JW: people perhaps doing a wait and see (after looking at site).
Maybe arguments on the site will produce more interest.
TW: propose use Scalability mailing list for all discussion to
get more interest.
General agreement about conversations on sourceforge site.
Uploading docs, patches, files into Sourceforge.
Sourceforge sight or web page. SF URL or Web page URL. Use
the Web page lse.sourceforge.net
JW: on adding things to web page.....
NOTE: LSE members can send updates to John Wright and he'll
add it to the web page.
Also trying to decommission some links at SGI to strengthen
LSE and de-emphasize company sites. Moving all of the SGI
development to this LSE project.
Links from lse to other scalability pages on the web?
JW: put in UMichigan links for performance tuning etc.
Also Linux Memory mgmt.
Tim Wright and John Wright both have admin access to the site.
Scalability and Performance Roadmap (from IBM folks)
FYI: Another rev coming on Monday
More Scheduler work and Updates
Initial results posting next week.
Hans said no later than 12/15
Rick Lindsley working on lock hierarchy doc
...tells what is where...
Maps to "Where we are now" - or all info that you need
that isn't currently known or available.
Also about where contention isn't available from one
lock to another.
Good response
Dave Olien doing apic stuff.
Jonathan Lahr looking at lock contention...setting up benchmark
on 2way machine running lockmeter and looking at
contention. Looking for non-scalable parts and work
on them.
Postmark sql benchmark with db load.
Want an io centric workload.
JW: we have IO benchmarks that pound on things.
Getting some movement.
Machines have turned up at IBM.
Have 2,4,8way P3 Xeon systems. About as common as you can get
for MP systems out there. View is that people have these...
8way is corollary bus, std. Intel board, with Systems mgmt.
board.
Focusing on IA32 cuz its common.
playing with Numa....
John Wright's Update
doing some work on 32way MIPS Numa machine....
TW: OSDL hw would be a good fit.
Ray Bryant: asked Tim Witham about OSDL....Its OK, its for open
source projects.
Meeting Logistics, Soliciting Participation and Posting
e.g. the dial-in number on the Web page?
JW: suggested opening up the conf. call
JW: also noted comm. involvement to start slowly until 2.4 gets
out the door.
TW: once 2.5 starts we'll have stuff to develop.
JW: wants more things going on on the web and mailing list.
at some point we send to slashdot. and get PR
Publishing to Slashdot...
LG: VA working on this? They trying to free someone up to work
on it. No name given. Talked to the manager of their
engineering team. Good people there.
JH: introduced himself - Intel Enterprise Linux Marketing - Prog. Mgr.
working with Steve Carbonari to scope Intel's effort.
Steve in hiring mode.
Luann is the SRM for Intel IBM. Talked with Dan Frye
of LTC. Staying plugged into it. Has enough Linux accounts
to be useful and spread the word.
Luann Caldera, Turbo and VA Linux. Can help us publicize and
get people involved from her other accounts.
AR need lse-announce mailing list. John Wright to set that up
for announcements and non-technical and things that come along.
Its usually low volume and allows lurking.
John Wright: Mgr. of Linx Scalab. group at SGI, has active names
like Kanoj Sarcer (one of the cabal), beneficial to push
things straight to Linux. Expect everyone can use him as
a resource.
Has 7-8 people on his team. Many scattered, not just scalab.
Kanoj working on iA64 stuff. He did the mips64 port to the
Origin 2K (older platform). A reserch effort on numa with
high processor cnt. Quirkiness.
Ulf Karlsson, active in original Mips port, doing io stuff
working with tumalari (SGI). Elevator algorithms
and read/write enhancements.
Ananth Ananthanarayanan working with xfs, kind of the system
arch. guy and has hand in everything.
Getting xfs out the door and performing
Nick Pollitt working with process pinging stuff. In 2.4, its
in but no system call, still debating semantics. Have a patch
and can get it out to people but it may chg 10x before
it goes out. Also has a run-on command that sits on
top of that to run on a certain processor.
KIO stuff is Chait Tumuluri-working with Suse and it will go in
soon as 2.4 goes out the door. Very nice performance
boost to the file system. Really good.
Some of the IO layer..messing with....Jeff Sorenson
from Linuxcare discussing 2.5, needs big SCSI cleanup
make mid-layer into more of a library. Write to
that layer and have real scsi driver on the other side.
SSI - Sequent SCSCI Intf. could be used as a reference.
Have it also in IRIX e.g. XSCSI which is ported and
works. But, OSS it is tied up in political hoops.
TW: you can threaten the SSI.
Tom Duffy did lot with devfs...have pro pack, use all base
distribs but install new kernel and init fixups.
seems pretty well recieved as OK. Criteria using,
if it goes in and its backport, its OK. RH, Suse and
Turbo already use that criteria. Tom is the arch.
of that. Talk to Tom if interested.
Intern Quentin Arce who takes care of osf and testing framework.
John Hawkes does lockmeter and profiling.
Scott Foehner - port of KDB to ia64 platform. has scheduler
patches for numa....sys calls into arch code and
l3 cache work. probably should put that on the web
site and consolidate patches.
All oss (oss.sgi.com) work except XSCSI stuff. Shouldn't take
long to resolve. Some of it have projects on OSF but
for Scalab. we're trying to consolidate with SF.
Lot of work done with specific maintainers.
Scott / numa with Kanoj and Linus to recognize the
numa stuff. Some is behind closed doors, some on
kernel mailing list. Trying to get more on the LSE site.
Doing some stuff with Threads and openmp and bm's towards
that. Cust. with openmp apps. Pthreads libraries? Need more
info.
TW:Somebody doing kernel add-in to fix up pthread behaviour...?
JW: Linus doesn't want lightweight processes...
Ray: Java work doesn't use threads in the kernel.....
they working with the maintainers of glibc and
gnupthreads...receptive to the changes.
Contact is Bill Abt. doing other things, not able to spend
time on it. Mentioned SGI interested and can help.
JW wants his email....SGI has people looking at that.
Satya Sharma and Mark Brown working the issues in the LTC.
More Posting and Community Participation and Influence
Hans: Trying to put more on the lse side, to get the comm.
involved. Better for getting outside companies involved as well.
JW: Kanoj and others working with the Linux cabal and we should
work with those relationships. To get in, talk to the cabal and
build the relationsips.
JW: OLS-Ottowa Linux Showcase, all the Linux people there.
IBM is sponsoring it this year. its in June.
Suggest get in early cuz its closed by April.
JW: trying to get Compaq interested, TW: Tim Wright will also
call them.
LG: Dell? Are they interested? TW: They are very focused on
the HW they ship. Few people are watching the mailing list.
Focused on getting Dell machines working. TW: No harm in
asking them...
JW: If you have any community contacts, mention this project.
LG: Suggest an Invitation letter for the right people.
JW: Agree. Put a welcome statement on the Web site.
Meeting Charter: This meeting is bi-weekly:
- Technical Focus
- Status Updates
- Can inject other agenda items.
SUGGESTION: For agenda items, send email through the mailing list.
Use the tech list.
Next Meeting is 12/22.
Bridge numbers and Pass Code are the same.
Call 1-888-790-7156
Passcode:85875
Confirmation #: 8858784