Re: ASUS p5q-em board and VT-d

[Brian Lavender <brian@brie.com>]

I emailed ASUS about this feature and this was the response I got.

   Can you update the BIOS for the P5Q-EM to initialize Graphics
   Translation Tables?  According to the manual, it does not currently
   initialize these tables.  I was looking to buy this board to use the
   VT-D features and it seems that you have not initialized full support
   for it.

   brian

Response from ASUS

   Hello Sir/Madam
   The reason it is not supported is because at this time the BIOS and
   chipset cannot handle that feature. I will send a request to the
   engineering department but I cannot promise they will design a BIOS to
   support this feature on this board.

On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 07:43:27PM -0700, Brian Lavender wrote:
> Anyone get the ASUS p5q-em b boar to support VT-d? It looks like it
> is lacking the capability for the bios to zero out pages for the Graphics
> Translation Table (GTT). See this thread.
> 
> http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-04/msg00670.html
> 
> And, I also looked at the manual for the board and it appears that the
> option to specify memory for the GTT is not available. This is what it
> says in the manual, but I am not sure if this has been changed.
> 
> GTT Graphics Memory Size [No VT mode, 2MB]
> This item is not available.
> 
> I guess I am confused why the BIOS needs to access the memory for the GTT. It
> seems that this ought to be similar to setting pages for the MMU, but I don't 
> know the whole story to this.
> 
> Two questions I have. Does the BIOS need to configure this? Has Asus fixed this,
> or is this board non-functional with VT-d? I see they have a more recent bios
> update than the thread where Sandeer tried the board.
> 
> http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&product=1&model=P5Q-EM&type=map&f_type=3
> 
> brian
> -- 
> Brian Lavender
> http://www.brie.com/brian/
> 
> "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to
> show their absence!"
> 
> Professor Edsger Dijkstra
> 1972 Turing award recipient
> 
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-- 
Brian Lavender
http://www.brie.com/brian/

"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to
show their absence!"

Professor Edsger Dijkstra
1972 Turing award recipient