what is an 'smp' kernel ?

[Gilboa Davara]

On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 13:50 +0000,
joao.miguel.ferreira.19740720 at portugalmail.pt wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'dd like to know what is an 'smp' kernel ?
> Why are there 2 'smp' kernels and 2 'not smp' kernels in my /boot/ directory ?
> 
> Thanks...
> 
> jmf
> 

SMP stands for "symmetrical multi-processing", or, in layman's terms
having more then a single physical (or logical) processing core. (Or
CPU).
I assume that you have a Pentium 4 with HT (Hyper-threading) capability.
(Which, in-order to improve performance, turns a single processor into
two logical processors).
An SMP kernel is required to support more then a single CPU. (Be that
physical or logical)
The Fedora installers puts two kernels, one with SMP support and one
without.
The normal SMP-less kernel is mostly used for troubleshooting. (Things
tend to break on SMP systems...)

Gilboa