openMosix project shutting down
Posted by Fraser Campbell Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:37:00 GMT
Moshe Bar has announced that the openMosix project is ending because “The increasing power and availability of low cost multi-core processors is rapidly making single-system image (SSI) Clustering less of a factor in computing. The direction of computing is clear and key developers are moving into newer virtualization approaches and other projects”.
Moshe is behind the Qumranet startup that is developing Linux kernel virtual machine (KVM).
This loss of openMosix strikes me as a shame. I rather liked the idea of a single system image (extreme NUMA?), especially when combined with virtualization. Why not have a 64-way SMP box where groups of 4 to 8 CPUs are actually independent machines. CPUs could be added on the fly and parts of the “machine” could even be migrated to new hosts without impacting services.
I’m surprised that there isn’t demand / market for this but I guess there really isn’t, Virtual Iron used to offer single system image clustering (or should be call it aggregation) prior to their switch to the Xen hypervisor as well.
See announcement on openMosix mailing list and check out the openMosix website if you’re interested in more information.
Virtual Iron created a virtual machine/single system image clustering product and delivered it as the first few versions of their cleverly named product, Virtual Iron. They stepped away from the concept later to focus on their management tools and Xen. Their logic seems very similar to that expressed by Moshe Bar.