Re: CPU cache problem

["J.A. Magallon" <jamagallon@able.es>]

On 2002.12.07 Z F wrote:
>Hello Manish and Mark
>
>The BIOS does not have any info about L2 cache accept for
>enable/disable
>switch.
>I noticed that after the POST message in the table of all installed
>devices it said CPU 1.7 GHz... Memory installed 256 M (RAM) and 
>CPU cache: NONE.
>
>I have upgraded the BIOS on the system and now it says 128K, as it
>should, according to CPU specifications.
>Mark tells that /proc/cpuinfo reports L1 cache size (which I assume is 
>8K+12 K in my case, even though I do not understand what that means)
>But how to check that L2 is operational?
>
>For windows I have ASUSprobe software, which after the BIOS upgrade
>started to report that CPU has L2 cache, but it reports it regardless
>of BIOS switch(enable/disable) as if program simply reads the CPU
>specifications. (Before BIOS upgrade it reported 0K L2 cache.)
>
>The question I have is: Is it possible to tell whether or not
>the kernel sees the L2 CPU cache and its size?
>

Supposing you have a recent kernel with cpuid support, try x86info,
at least it will tell you what processor-bios is reporting (ala your
ASUS utility).

To see what the kernel thinks about the processor, cat /proc/cpuinfo.
The cache reported there is L2.

Hope this helps.

-- 
J.A. Magallon <jamagallon@able.es>      \                 Software is like sex:
werewolf.able.es                         \           It's better when it's free
Mandrake Linux release 9.1 (Cooker) for i586
Linux 2.4.20-jam1 (gcc 3.2 (Mandrake Linux 9.1 3.2-4mdk))