Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 08:39:31 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: nathan@vidican.com Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Athlon MP / AMD 760MP Chipset (Athlon SMP question) Message-ID: <3B4B21B3.26B76804@mindspring.com> References: <200107092108.f69L87E98563@mail.ipsnetwork.net>
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Nathan Vidican wrote: > > I seem to recall a few discussions about the Dual Athlon > buzz some while back which had stated that the Athlon would > essentially require a completely different SMP spec than that > currently utilized by the Intel procesors. Assuming that this > was true, one would assume that the O/S too would require a > different kind of SMP support in order to function with these > CPUs. > Unfortuneately, a recent thread has me at a bit of a loss here; in > that people seem to be speaking about the processor/smp chipset as > though they function just like Intel's do. Assuming that this > conflicting information is indeed correct, then would it not be > feasible to assume that the code currently implemented for using SMP > implementations under FreeBSD would be portable to the new Athlon MP > processor line? You should check the SMP list archives. The systems work fine with FreeBSD, as it currently sits, but the motherboards are "jumbo sized", and take a strange power connector, so you can only get the power supply from one vendor (so far). There was an attempt to create a non-Intel standard called OpenAPIC, but no one implemented motherboards that supported it, so that attempt died. Instead, AMD implemented the Intel APIC specification; I'm not sure if they did it by licensing the patent (Intel had a patent on the APIC design), or if it's just been long enough for it to come off patent (I seem to remember the external 386 APIC chips were out in 1984 or a little after that, which would put them after the 1998 date for 14 years from date of issue for the patents on them). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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