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Date:      Wed, 01 May 2002 23:17:22 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>, freebsd-smp@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: hlt when idle?
Message-ID:  <3CD0D9F2.839890E7@mindspring.com>
References:  <XFMail.20020501161528.jhb@FreeBSD.org>

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John Baldwin wrote:
> > Do both CPUs get clock interrupts on x86?
> 
> No, the interrupts seem to be round-robin, but each clock intr is only
> sent to one CPU unlike on alpha where they are broadcast.

I was going to make the obvious Alpha comment because it was
Andrew asking the question, but since he posted it only to
the SMP list and talked about his Pentium III, I didn't.

The same is true on SPARC, FWIW.

All interrupts on x86 *could* be "broadcast", if the system
was run in "virtual wire" mode (MP Spec 1.4).

This would *still* break on motherboards that failed to route
the clock interrupts via the I/O APIC, though, which is
"enough of them to be a large problem".  8-(.

Sending an IPI for all processors for the clock interrupt
from the processor that receives the clock interrupt is not
really a good idea (as I said before), but it's a possible
method of achieving "virtual broadcast".

As I also said before... "ugly".  8-(.


That aside, it might be an OK thing to do on the non-Intel
platforms (but again, he was complaining about x86).

-- Terry

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