Because of this potential sharing
of data, the CPUs for such machines must be able to ???snoop??? the memory bus to
determine where copies of data reside and whether the data is being updated. This
snooping is managed transparently by the operating system that controls the SMP
system. Oracle Standard Edition One, Standard Edition, or Enterprise Edition can be
used on these platforms. (Oracle limits the number of CPUs you can deploy using
Standard Edition One and Standard Edition while placing no limit on the number of
CPUs for Enterprise Edition.)
SMP platforms have been available since the 1980s as midrange platforms, primarily
as Unix-based machines. Today, there is a category of entry-level servers featuring
mostly 64-bit CPUs (replacing previous-generation 32-bit CPUs). The most popular
operating systems in this category are Windows variations and Linux.
SMP servers that can scale to larger sizes from platform vendors such as HP, IBM,
and Sun feature variations on this basic design. For example, SMP systems might
include multicore CPUs, a larger L2 cache, faster memory bus and/or multiple
higher-speed I/O channels.
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