OT (probably): HP T500, HPUX and multiple CPUs

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Thu Oct 28 15:34:24 2004

Actually I'm not quite sure how old the machine is - maybe it is ten
years old now and so on topic just...

Anyhow, are there any experts out there who know if a specific version
of HPUX is needed to run with SMP support on an HP 9000 T500?

We've got a 6-CPU T500 at the museum with HPUX 11.xx on it, but
according to the status LEDs it's just running everything on the one CPU
with the other 5 sitting idle.

Possibilities that spring to mind:

a) as above, it's a version / installation issue

b) it's a licensing thing and there's no way of using standard HPUX
media on a multi-CPU machine without paying HP lots of money (boo!)

c) the machine or HPUX is a bit funny in the way it handles multiple
CPUs and we need force processes to run on a specific CPU via some
command, rather than it being transparently handled by the CPU

d) user stupidity (none of us really know much about the machine and nor
are we HPUX experts)

Option d would probably be preferable - we can always learn :) Option
b's obviously the least desirable and would result in us looking at
Linux for the machine I think!

Anyone worked with these beasts before and know offhand what the problem
might be? (we've got HPUX 11 media by the way; but as stated maybe not a
version that's truly compatible with a multi-CPU machine)

Being able to force stuff to run on a specific CPU from a shell would
actually be beneficial, as I have an idea to do a bit of distributed
raytracing on the machine for giggles (6 CPUs is good, but 90MHz each
IIRC is less so :-)

ta

Jules
Received on Thu Oct 28 2004 - 15:34:24 BST