Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!oberon!cit-vax!elroy!ames!pacbell!att!ihnp4!ihlpe!res
From: res@ihlpe.ATT.COM (Rich Strebendt, AT&T-DSG @ Indian Hill West)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: General purpose commercial multiprocessor systems without shared-memory
Summary: Minor correction (picking a nit)
Keywords: multiprocessor, UNIX
Message-ID: <2963@ihlpe.ATT.COM>
Date: 20 May 88 22:52:50 GMT
References: <2552@ihwpt.ATT.COM> <646@auvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 21

In article <646@auvax.UUCP>, rwa@auvax.UUCP (Ross Alexander) writes:
> Bruce Wong @ somewhere.att asks about non-shared memory general purpose
> multiprocessor timesharing-type machines (see subject line).  There
> is such a beast - the AT&T 3B4000.  Runs Unix Sys V3.x, too;

The current release of the 3B4000 runs SVR3.1.1.

> but shared memory stuff is not supported between processes running on
> disjoint processors.  So this machine's Unix is _not_ strictly SVID
> compliant.

To pick a nit and correct a misimpression:  Shared memory is identified
in the SVID as a machine-dependent feature "and may not be present on
all systems."  So the 3B4000 does adhere to the letter of the SVID.
Shared memory, incidently, is available for processes on the SAME
processor, but is not available for processes running on different
processors.

				Rich Strebendt
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