ASUS p5q-em board and VT-d

ASUS p5q-em board and VT-d

[Brian Lavender]

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

Re: ASUS p5q-em board and VT-d

[Brian Lavender]

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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel

-- 
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