Re: Lost Ticks on x86_64

Tim Hockin
2005-08-07T21:24:34Z

On Sun, Aug 07, 2005 at 02:51:19PM -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> > It's most likely bad SMM code in the BIOS that blocks the CPU too long
> > and is triggered in idle. You can verify that by using idle=poll
> > (not recommended for production, just for testing) and see if it goes away.
> >
>
> WTF, since when do *desktops* use SMM? Are you telling me that we have
> to worry about these stupid ACPI/SMM hardware bugs on the desktop too?

SMM is how BIOSes do legacy support (which stops at OS-handover). It's
also how some BIOSes do ECC reporting and logging.

We just do pci tweaks to turn it off in the OS.