From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 5 Aug 2001 04:40:10 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 5 Aug 2001 04:40:01 -0400 Received: from cx570538-a.elcjn1.sdca.home.com ([24.5.14.144]:24192 "EHLO keroon.dmz.dreampark.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sun, 5 Aug 2001 04:39:47 -0400 Message-ID: <3B6D055B.3A503D4@randomlogic.com> Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 01:35:39 -0700 From: "Paul G. Allen" Organization: Akamai Technologies, Inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2-2 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Linux kernel developer's mailing list" Subject: Re: SMP Support for AMD Athlon MP motherboards In-Reply-To: <002b01c11d62$73e65540$8405000a@slurv> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Andre Tomt wrote: > > I recently got my hands on a unreleased evaluation AthlonMP motherboard with > two 1.1Ghz Athlon CPU's. First thing I tried was of course Linux. I ran into > some problems, however. First of all, I have a K7 Thunder with dual 1.4GHz Thunderbird CPUs, 1 ATA100 (IBM) drive, and 1 U160 (also IBM) drive. I have a friend with the same board using dual 1.2GHz MP CPUs. They both work fine. > > 1. the SCSI subsystem hung during loading. Before anything card-specefic > driver loaded. SMP og non-SMP kernels, same thing. Modular loading of > scsi-drivers did the same thing upon loading. Full lockup. Got it partly > working on an IDE drive after a while. Which release of Linux? I started with Red Hat 7.1 and it works with both SMP and non-SMP kernels, Athlon and PIII compiled kernels, and with a single CPU installed as well as both CPUs. I now have the original 2.4.2-2 SMP kernel, a UP 2.4.2-2 kernel, a 2.4.7 kernel, and a modified 2.4.x SMP kernel that all work fine. >>From what you say below, it sounds like it uses an onboard Adaptec 7899P SCSI controller, so Linux 2.4.2-2 (Red Hat Seawolf) should work fine. Make sure your termination and SCSI BIOS settings are correct (if BSD works, they are probably OK). > > 2. Linux did only see one CPU. Both CPUs need to be configured the same as far as FSB speed. I don't know what your board will do, or even if you can change the settings, but mine would not even POST when the two CPUs were set for different FSB speeds. (Tyan warns that setting the two differently can damage the MoBo. What a nice thing to see when you find that yours is configured wrong. I'm glad I only had a single CPU installed at the time. :) > > 3. It were highly unstable, even in non-SMP mode. Early versions of the AMD760MP chipset had serious problems. One of these was a DMA issue that may cause this. If you can set the results of lspci -x, we can tell you if your MP chipset may suffer from any (known) anomalies. My system has been running 24/7 for weeks and only gets rebooted to test new kernel builds (about once or twice every night.) > > Whats the degree of support in Linux for such an AMD mobo? Is the Athlon MP > architecture supported at all yet? More or less. The chipset works fine for the most part, but not all the features are fully supported. It also depends upon the BIOS. My BIOS has some problems, for example it does not set up the MTRRs on both CPUs properly and there are no settings for AGP and PCI modes (unlike my Asus A7V133, that seems to have just about everything, too bad the thing is so unstable) > > I managed to get FreeBSD running on it, and use the SCSI-controller > (Adaptec, not sure about what board since I do not have physical access as I > write this. Uses the aic7xxx driver, u160scsi). However, FreeBSD would not > boot in SMP mode (scsi lockup like Linux did in both SMP and non-SMP > kernels, it did see both CPU's however...). Sounds like a hardware problem. > > Now, shed some light on this. I tried kernels fram 2.0.3x to 2.4.7, 2.0 and > 2.2 did alot of really strange stuff, like making user space apps saying > "You do not exist"(?). > > How is the support for AMD Athlon MP, really :-) Start with Red Hat 7.1. I know it works out of the box. If that doesn't work, I'd look at hardware, BIOS configuration, board jumpers (if any), and the like. That's about all that comes to mind at the moment. PGA -- Paul G. Allen UNIX Admin II/Network Security Akamai Technologies, Inc. www.akamai.com