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From: Jia-Shiun Li <jiashiun@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2014 12:11:30 +0800
Message-ID: <CAHNYxxPAqrRcJyxY8ZDnL87FdRAUxBL522nAAEQpA19uByYE2w@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Processor cores not properly detected/activated?
To: Tim Bishop <tim-lists@bishnet.net>
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Cc: FreeBSD CURRENT <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>,
 Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org>
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On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 6:38 PM, Tim Bishop <tim-lists@bishnet.net> wrote:
> On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 09:03:12PM -0600, Alan Somers wrote:
>> Yeah, I think so.  It seems like a GENERIC kernel ought to be able to
>> handle the biggest commonly available quad socket systems.  Anything
>> with more than 4 sockets, though, is probably too exotic to deserve
>> such special treatment.
>
> I submitted a PR to that effect:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=190169
>
> Thanks again for your help.
>
> Tim.
>

Hi,

I read in the follow-up of the PR that current hard limit is 256.
Currently available systems* can already push usage up to 240. IVB-EX
aka Xeon E7v2 supports 8-socket * 15-core * 2-thread. Expect something
to break 256 in less than a year I think. X2APIC support will be
required then. In theory it is already possible to build larger
systems with custom glue logic, but I am not aware of any.

*: E.g. IBM System x3950 X6


-Jia-Shiun.