Threads became popular on operating systems that have high overhead for starting new processes. Starting a new process on Linux has fairly low overhead, so use of multiple cooperating processes is usually a simpler approach. (Raymond Chapter 7) Threaded applications are generally more complex and perform worse than those than use multiple cooperating processes to split up tasks. Having more options is never a bad thing, however, and some Linux programs do use threads to split up tasks and gain improved performance on multiprocessor systems. The new threading model should provide a significant performance boost for these types of applications, especially on multiprocessor servers, provided the applications are compatible with NPTL; it is not backwards compatible with LinuxThreads. The performance improvement is a strong incentive for authors of threaded applications to rewrite them to take advantage of the new threading model.
Linux 2.4 cannot address enough devices for certain applications involving large multiple device storage arrays. It can only support 256 major device types with 256 devices each, for a total of 65536 devices. Devices being split in to types, this means that Linux 2.4 can only connect to 256 SCSI disk drives at a time. A larger number of disks may be required for a server managing a large storage array. Linux 2.6 supports 4096 major devices with 1048576 minor devices each, for a total of 232, or over four billion devices. (Meredith19) it is unlikely that anyone will want to connect a single server to more than 1048576 SCSI disk drives at a time in the foreseeable future. The IO model is also improved with regard to large systems. Previously, Linux could only handle IO requests to block devices such as disk drives by breaking them up in to 512 byte sectors. 2.6 allows larger IO requests and larger sector sizes. The result is improved performance for applications involving large IO requests, such as databases. (Meredith 20) the maximum size of a block device has increased to 8 exabytes, though filesystems are limited to 16 terabytes, and nobody manufacturers an 8 exabyte disk drive.
IPSEC provides encryption for all network traffic over IP, regardless of application protocol. This makes any network effectively private. Modern servers need to be able to communicate over public networks securely. Previous attempts to secure communications involved adding support for encryption to individual applications. IPSEC provides a standard, uniform means of securing network traffic. Applications no longer need to support or even be aware of encryption to communicate securely. It is reasonably common that an application required by a user does not support encryption, but does transmit information that should not be accessible to anyone other than the intended recipient. IPSEC solves the problem, providing security for all network communication. Third-party support for IPSEC existed in Linux 2.4, but could not be assumed to exist on any Linux-based system. Linux 2.6 has native support for IPSEC. An important application on a server might be allowing remote access to a file share on a networked...
Information Systems Describe some reasons why Linux is installed on only a very small fraction of desktop computers. Are there particular categories of products or users who might see Linux as more appealing than conventional operating systems? Do you think Linux's share of the desktop market will increase? Why or why not? Linux is less prevalent on server systems than desktops, as the latter type of systems have been the primary focus
Slide 9: Technological innovations in emergency management The starting point in the creation of a plan on how to improve our program from a technological standpoint has been constituted by the review of the it industry. The scope of this research has been that of identifying the innovations in the field and their relevance for our agency and its mission. The results of the research endeavor are briefly presented below: GIS is
The article on Google is brief, but is worth a note on how the founders put forth the idea of active philanthropy as part of the activity of an it company. Many of the directions in which Google has developed have a certain philanthropy element attached to it. "The Hacker Ethic" discusses the moral framework within which the hacker operates. Sometimes, it is difficult to understand how this is possible, given
Migration Project Scenario: Tony's Chips has recently been sold to a new independent company. The new company has hired you to manage a project that will move the old Website from an externally hosted solution to an internal one. The company's leadership is very concerned about redundancy for their site, insisting that a back-up site be available as a failover in case the main site goes down. In addition, they
There are minor differences in prices, quality, and features of these products. Therefore, consumers can choose those products that best match their current needs. In the new market, Technosoft will need to strive hard for building a strong customer base by producing and promoting innovative technology solutions. v. The Bargaining Power of Suppliers: The bargaining power of suppliers is strong against new and small scale software manufacturers while very low against
82). Both desktop and Web widgets have the same basic components. Fundamentally, they use Web compatible formats, even if intended to run in a desktop environment. This means that the core of the widget is HTML and CSS code which contains the actual content of the widget, namely text, linked images/video or content pulled from a server of Web service. Alternatively, the widget content can be created using Flash, although
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