Dan,

I believe that multi-core processors initially boot up in "real mode" with 
just one core running.  The operating system has to be smart enough to 
interrogate the processor and/or firmware (BIOS, EFI) to discover and 
activate any additional cores.  So QNX4 will probably "just work" on a 
multi-core processor, but one core will be active; the other cores will just 
sit there dormant.  The bigger problem with QNX4 on newer hardware is the 
peripherals such as USB, newer ethernet interfaces, etc.

One possible option is to run QNX4 inside a virtual machine using something 
like VMWare.  VMWare has a product (ESXi?) that runs directly on the server 
"bare metal", and then runs multiple virtual machines on top of that.  Or 
you can run Linux or Windows directly on the server, install VMWare on top 
of that, and then create your virtual machines.

I do this with QNX4 using the VMWare's free VMWare Server 2.x product.  This 
gives me multiple virtual machines to do software development/testing on 
before moving my software to our real hardware platform (our embedded 
hardware that ships to our customers).  The virtual machines are far more 
cost effective for a lot of my internal testing (and quieter!) than our real 
embedded hardware.

VMWare abstracts away a lot of the real server hardware.  The virtual 
hardware seems to be well supported by QNX4, at least for my purposes.  When 
you create a virtual machine, you can tell the virtual machine to behave as 
a single-core CPU, even if the real CPU is multi-core.  (This is in fact my 
situation.)

Since you're running inside a virtual machine on top of a non-real-time OS 
(Linux, Windows, or VMWare's own OS), you lose some of QNX4's real-time 
capability.  This may or may not be a problem for you, depending on your 
needs.  When QNX4 first came out, hardware was a lot slower.  QNX4 inside a 
virtual machine on modern hardware may be as fast or faster than running 
directly on yesteryear's hardware...

Originally, we performed all of our QNX4 software builds on a dedicated 
physical i586-class machine.  Now we use a VMWare virtual machine on top of 
Linux on a 2-year-old DELL PowerEdge server with a Core2 Duo processor and 
4GB of RAM.  Our builds are now twice as a fast as on the old dedicated 
hardware.



I hope this helps!  Good luck!

Walt



--------------------------------------------------
From: "Dan Li" <community-noreply@qnx.com>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 11:15 AM
To: "qnx4-community" <post86428@community.qnx.com>
Subject: Install QNX4 on a server machine (IBM/HP/DELL)

> In past years I have been using two IBM x330 machine to run QNX as remote 
> access real-time servers. Unfortunately one is down recently, so I have to 
> buy a new server to replace the dead one. Now I have some questions:
>
> 1. Multicore CPU support: Now hardly find a server machine with single 
> core CPU. I am not sure about the ability of QNX4 multicore support?
>
> 2. Some concerns about the drivers of network card, video card.  Any 
> suggestion about server machine selection from IBM/HP/DELL. I think one 
> entry-level server shall be good enough to run QNX4, such as:
>        - HP ProLiant DL120
>        - IBM IBM System x3250
>        - DELL PowerEdge R210
> Anyone has some recommendation about this?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Dan
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> QNX4 Community Support
> http://community.qnx.com/sf/go/post86428
>