Super Computer
Very seldom does a single 'super-computer' run Windows, and just as seldom does another OS use a registry in the sense that Windows does. More 'super-computers' run on one of two platforms- Intel's Itanium2, or Sun Microsystems hardware. Intel's Itanium platform on a hardware level allows roughly 2TB of Ram and 64 or more processors to run simultaneously. This does require a modified kernel for better SMP support and memory management. Sun is known for having even larger numbers of cores and processors running at a time, as well, usually on Solaris with UltraSPARC IV processors.
The operating system itself just knows how to handle that much hardware, the same way you could run a dual-core processor, 2 sticks of ram, or a quad Xeon server, but on a much larger scale.
Clusters are similar, but use TCP/IP to link multiple computers and use either a hardware solution or a software solution with a single node as the master to send data to all the other nodes.
..Yeah but I only use Windows for the Media and I am finding myself using SuSe more. You seem to know alot about computers and know what the hell you're talking about. That's really cool. But.. the question is how do you get it done? If I have two computers that I want to use the same processors and memory than how can I do that?
This is what I am working with:
I have 2 computers and a laptop.. But the two computers I want to.. well; not network but rig it to where I am able to compile the processor's and the memory and basically have it as one.. So it will be like a dual processor and 3 gig's of memory.. and 500 gb hard drive.. you see what I mean? Is it possibe? Thank you though.. I enjoy reading your post!
Basically, that's nearly impossible so simply. What you're talking about would be a cluster. Processor and ram aside for the moment, sharing disks the way you're talking about could be accomplished one of two ways. First of all, you could set it up to be similar to a RAID setup, or have two main folders mounted like this
Mount / on Disk0 Mount /usr on Disk1 Mount /temp on Disk0 Mount /bin on Disk0
or something similar. That, short of an expensive hardware solution, is the best you'll get with that much ease. Processor and memory sharing, on the other hand, is much more difficult to begin with. The only thing I can suggest is to start researching clustering a bit more. Windows Server 2003 implemented a moderately high-quality clustering solution, but you would have to be running Server 2003 which is quite expensive. (Windows Server 2003 is a very good operating system for what it is, on its own. I could get into comparisions, but I won't.)
You can certainly find other software for clustering, but that will take more work on your part. Finally, if you expect to running an application on one virtual processor, (made of two physical processors,) don't count on it. The best you'll be able to get is something similar to a dual-core setup, but much slower.
Overall, I'd say to just run one server remotely from the other and have them share resources like disk space and nothing more than have the second processor execute one application while the other does your user-level tasks.