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Linux has been running on 2000+ core machines for longer than a decade (at least):

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4507/how-many-cores...

The last time discussions about Linux and SMP were hip, its competitors were Windows 2000 and 2003 :-D

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!

Linux ran on 512 processor Altix machines more than a decade ago already.

Most (> 98%?) supercomputers run Linux. Has been so for many years.

Those are mostly a bazillion nodes with a couple dozen Xeon cores each, wired up together (over a very nice interconnect). Each Linux instance only has to handle the cores for a single node.

That said, I agree with you that it isn't particularly surprising that Linux handles lots of cores fine, it's been run on more esoteric hardware for ages.

Ironically with IBM tooling though, many of those computers use xlc toolchain.