Re: Choosing a HyperThreading/SMP/MultiCore kernel ?

[Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>]

Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 15:18:31 EST, Bill Davidsen said:
>> Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
>>> On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:03:49 EST, Lennart Sorensen said:
>>>> I would expect any distribution should work on these (as long as the
>>>> kernel they use isn't too old.).  Of course if it is a Mac, you need a
>>>> distribution that supports their firmware (which is of course not a PC
>>>> bios).  As long as you can boot it, any i386 or amd64 kernel with smp
>>>> enabled should use all the processors present (well amd64 on the
>>>> core2duo and on the p4 if it is em64t enabled).
>>> amd64 will only work on a core2duo if it's a T7200 or higher - the
>>> lower numbers are 32-bit-only chipsets.  I admit not knowing what
>>> exact variant the Mac has.
>> I don't believe that's correct, the Intel features page indicates all 
>> core2 have both 64bit and virtualization. Perhaps some of the core (no 
>> 2) models didn't? Even the old 930 had those features by my notes.
> 
> My screwup - the chart I looked at managed to get the Core and Core2 series
> mixed up. Here's a hopefully more canonical one:
> 
> http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/proc_info_table.pdf
> 
> Does however list some Core2 that don't do virtualization (page 3, the
> T5600 and T5500), which is what I think confused the author of the table
> that I misread. ;)

I missed those in terms of virtualization, but it seems that all core2 
support "intel 64" which I assume means emt64t, and what I thought 
Valdis meant by "the lower numbers are 32-bit-only chipsets." They all 
do seem to have 64bit, and should run 64bit Linux just fine.
-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   CTO TMR Associates, Inc
   Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979