These systems required modified operating-system kernels with NUMA support that explicitly
understood the topological properties of the system’s memory.
These products had to modify the Linux kernel
to support NUMA
Processors are so fast they usually require memory
to be directly attached to the socket they are on.
it requires the traversal of the memory
interconnect first.
NUMA systems today are mostly encountered on
multisocket systems.
non-NUMA Linux system
Zones are used to describe memory ranges
required required to support devices that are not
able to perform DMA
to all memory locations. Zones are also used to mark
memory for other special needs.
Requires explicit mappings for access by the
kernel (HIGHMEM).