241
submitted 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/linux@programming.dev
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] sxan@midwest.social 15 points 18 hours ago

Back in the day, there was a distributed cluster OS called Mosix. Even back then I had several spare computers lying about, and the idea of being able to chain them all together and have one virtual computer that would automatically distribute processing without special coding was enticing. It turned out to not work very well unless you did specially code for it, or clustered the computers very tightly with fiber; it just wasn't worth it.

But when I see piles of compute like this, a part of my still wants to network them all together and run ... well, whatever fills the shoes of OpenMosix these days, if anything does.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 3 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, I've always wanted to do something like that. I've always got a bunch of computers running virtually idle and it would be nice if they could just help out with whatever your main PC is doing.

[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 8 points 18 hours ago

Some modern workloads can take advantage of multiple computers. You can usually compile using things like distcc and spread the load across them.

If you make them into a Kubernetes cluster you can run many copies or many different things.

It's still an unsolved problem: we still end up with single core bottlenecks to this day, before even involving other machines altogether.

[-] sxan@midwest.social 3 points 7 hours ago

Yes. It's always the bandwidth that's the main bottleneck, whether CPU-Memory, IPC, or the network.

Screw quantum computers; what we need is quantum entangled memory sharing at a distance. Imagine! Even if only within a single computer, all memory could could be L1 cache.

this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
241 points (99.2% liked)

Linux

6466 readers
1060 users here now

A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system

Also check out:

Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS