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I mean, x86 didn't, but other systems had been exceeding 64 cores since the late 90s. And x86 arguably didn't ship >64 hardware thread systems until then becau

I mean, x86 didn't, but other systems had been exceeding 64 cores since the late 90s. And x86 arguably didn't ship >64 hardware thread systems until then because NT didn't support it.

Const-me 1y ago
> other systems had been exceeding 64 cores since the late 90s. Windows didn’t run on these other systems, why would Microsoft care about them? > x86 arguably didn't ship >64 hardware thread systems until then because NT didn't support it For publicly accessible web servers, Linux overtook Windows around 2005. Then in 2006 Amazon launched EC2, and the industry started that massive transition to the clouds. Linux is better suited for clouds, due to OS licensing and other reasons.
- monocasa 1y ago
  > Windows didn’t run on these other systems, why would Microsoft care about them? Because it was clear that high core count, single system image platforms were a viable server architecture, and NT was vying for the entire server space, intending to kill off the vendor Unices. . For publicly accessible web servers, Linux overtook Windows around 2005. Then in 2006 Amazon launched EC2, and the industry started that massive transition to the clouds. Linux is better suited for clouds, due to OS licensing and other reasons. Linux wasn't the only OS. Solaris and AIX were NT's competitors too back then, and supported higher core counts.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Windows NT was originally intended to be multi-platform.
  - p_ing 1y ago
    NT was and continues to be multi-platform. That doesn't mean every platform was or would have been profitable. x86 became 'good enough' to run your mail or web server, it doomed other architectures (and commonly OSes) as the cost of x86 was vastly lower than the Alphas, PowerPCs, and so on.
zamadatix 1y ago
> And x86 arguably didn't ship >64 hardware thread systems until then because NT didn't support it. If that were the case the above system wouldn't have needed 8 sockets. With NUMA systems the app needs to be scheduling group aware anyways. The difference here really appears when you have a single socket with more than 64 hardware threads, which took until ~2019 for x86.
- monocasa 1y ago
  There were single image systems with hundreds of cores in the late 90s and thousands of cores in the early 2000s. I absolutely stand by the fact that Intel and AMD didn't pursue high core count systems until that point because they were so focused on single core perf, in part because Windows didn't support high core counts. The end of Denmark scing forced their hand and Microsoft's processor group hack.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    Do you have anything to say regarding NUMA for the 90s core counts though? As I said, it's not enough that there were a lot of cores - they have to be monolithically scheduled to matter. The largest UMA design I can recall was the CS6400 in 1993, to go past that they started to introduce NUMA designs.
    - monocasa 1y ago
      Windows didn't handle numa either until they created processor groups, and there's all sorts reasons why you'd want to run a process (particularly on Windows which encourages single process high thread count software archs) that spans numa nodes. It's really not that big if a deal for a lot of workloads where your working set fits just fine in cache, or you take the high hatdware thread count approach of just having enough contexts in flight that you can absorb the extra memory latency in exchange for higher throughput.

I mean, x86 didn't, but other systems had been exceeding 64 cores since the late 90s. And x86 arguably didn't ship >64 hardware thread systems until then because NT didn't support it.

Const-me 1y ago

> other systems had been exceeding 64 cores since the late 90s. Windows didn’t run on these other systems, why would Microsoft care about them? > x86 arguably didn't ship >64 hardware thread systems until then because NT didn't support it For publicly accessible web servers, Linux overtook Windows around 2005. Then in 2006 Amazon launched EC2, and the industry started that massive transition to the clouds. Linux is better suited for clouds, due to OS licensing and other reasons.

monocasa 1y ago
> Windows didn’t run on these other systems, why would Microsoft care about them? Because it was clear that high core count, single system image platforms were a viable server architecture, and NT was vying for the entire server space, intending to kill off the vendor Unices. . For publicly accessible web servers, Linux overtook Windows around 2005. Then in 2006 Amazon launched EC2, and the industry started that massive transition to the clouds. Linux is better suited for clouds, due to OS licensing and other reasons. Linux wasn't the only OS. Solaris and AIX were NT's competitors too back then, and supported higher core counts.
rsynnott 1y ago
Windows NT was originally intended to be multi-platform.
- p_ing 1y ago
  NT was and continues to be multi-platform. That doesn't mean every platform was or would have been profitable. x86 became 'good enough' to run your mail or web server, it doomed other architectures (and commonly OSes) as the cost of x86 was vastly lower than the Alphas, PowerPCs, and so on.

zamadatix 1y ago

> And x86 arguably didn't ship >64 hardware thread systems until then because NT didn't support it. If that were the case the above system wouldn't have needed 8 sockets. With NUMA systems the app needs to be scheduling group aware anyways. The difference here really appears when you have a single socket with more than 64 hardware threads, which took until ~2019 for x86.

monocasa 1y ago
There were single image systems with hundreds of cores in the late 90s and thousands of cores in the early 2000s. I absolutely stand by the fact that Intel and AMD didn't pursue high core count systems until that point because they were so focused on single core perf, in part because Windows didn't support high core counts. The end of Denmark scing forced their hand and Microsoft's processor group hack.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- zamadatix 1y ago
  Do you have anything to say regarding NUMA for the 90s core counts though? As I said, it's not enough that there were a lot of cores - they have to be monolithically scheduled to matter. The largest UMA design I can recall was the CS6400 in 1993, to go past that they started to introduce NUMA designs.
  - monocasa 1y ago
    Windows didn't handle numa either until they created processor groups, and there's all sorts reasons why you'd want to run a process (particularly on Windows which encourages single process high thread count software archs) that spans numa nodes. It's really not that big if a deal for a lot of workloads where your working set fits just fine in cache, or you take the high hatdware thread count approach of just having enough contexts in flight that you can absorb the extra memory latency in exchange for higher throughput.