The SGI system you speak about is a decent Linux server and will do a fine job with Xinet. There are some important things you should know about the architecture of an SGI system past or present. They were based on NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Architecture).

This gave them an incredible advantage in moving massive amounts of data to and from components on the server. Thats the reason why many older IRIX Servers with only 600 Mhrz CPU's still run well today.

It's about the backPlane I/O not just the CPU. I bring this up because this is the one thing missing from the X86 offerings today from SGI and other Computer manufacturers. The Altix box with the Itanium CPU's uses NUMA and I am sure SGI will eventually release a NUMA based X86 server. Having more CPU's on a already crowded backplane creates even worse problems than having less CPU's. When it comes to speed across the backplane.

If components compete for resources because the backplane is over spent then the shiny new CPU's will starve for data until the system catches up from these bottle necks. This is a what makes the NUMA based servers and SGI Altix Itanium servers are the boxes to beat. Super fast multiple core CPU's with crazy fast backplane I/O. One without the other is pointless for a file server doing as much as a Xinet server does on a single server. It will be interesting to see the SGI Altix Itanium boxes running Xinet with their fast CPU's and NUMA backplane.

Kevin Martorana
Senior Systems Engineer
IO Integration