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Date:      Tue, 18 Mar 1997 10:02:32 -0800
From:      Erich Boleyn <erich@uruk.org>
To:        Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee>
Cc:        freebsd-smp@freebsd.org, gclarkii@main.gbdata.com
Subject:   Re: AMD K5 Pentium Equivalents 
Message-ID:  <E0w73DU-00057Y-00@uruk.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 18 Mar 1997 16:22:05 %2B0200." <Pine.BSF.3.95.970318161851.873A-100000@haldjas.folklore.ee> 

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Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee> wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Mar 1997, Gary Clark II wrote:
> 
> > Steven P. Donegan wrote:
> [snip]
> > 
> > You can run only Intel chips in FreeBSD SMP due to the fact that the others
> > (Cyrix and AMD) use a different standard for PIC usage.
> > (Please correct if I'm wrong on this)
> > 
> 
> This is a bit late reply, but still:
> 
> Could FreeBSD be made to run AMD chips in SMP mode? That is - are the SMP
> motherboards capable of running the AMD (and Cyrix chips) in SMP, and the
> only thing on the way is the software? Or are different SMP motherboards
> required?

The AMD and Cyrix chips are NOT compatible with the MPS motherboards
at all, and likely never will be.  They are missing (or have an
incompatible form of) the APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt
Controller).  Standard PC motherboards are generally not designed
to use them.

I believe any motherboard using an Intel APIC architecture can only
accept Intel CPUs.

There was some talk about AMD or Cyrix (I don't remember which) making
a competing architecture called the OpenPIC, but I haven't ever seen
such hardware, so at the very least it wasn't (or isn't) widely sold,
perhaps never commercially available.

--
  Erich Stefan Boleyn                 \_ E-mail (preferred):  <erich@uruk.org>
Mad Genius wanna-be, CyberMuffin        \__      (finger me for other stats)
Web:  http://www.uruk.org/~erich/     Motto: "I'll live forever or die trying"



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