Linux 4.7 To Support SGI's Ultraviolet UV4

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 16 May 2016 at 06:35 PM EDT. Add A Comment
HARDWARE
The x86 platform changes for the Linux 4.7 kernel are dominated by changes for bringing up support for SGI's next-generation Ultraviolet, UV4.

The x86/platform pull request for the Linux 4.7 merge window mostly comes down to the few thousand lines of arch/x86 changes for supporting the SGI UV4.

The 21 patch series from last month explains the necessary kernel changes for supporting the SGI Ultraviolet UV4. Mike Travis of the company explained, "This architecture change is a larger incremental change than previous UV updates because of a major change to the addressing scheme...Now on UV4 non-volatile memories can be added to any or all of the nodes. The available sizes can be both smaller and much larger than that of volatile memory on the same node. Other changes in addition to this basic overhaul of the internal logic include support for the increasing number of cores and thus CPU threads per node. Another inevitable architecture change will be the increase of the system addressing space supported in future processors, upward from the current 46 bits."

Unfortunately, not much more is known at this time about the SGI UV4. The UV4 hasn't been publicly announced yet and these Linux kernel patches weren't even tested on real hardware but just their UV4 simulator. For those unfamiliar with SGI UV in the super-computing space, visit SGI.com.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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