From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Mar 18 23:26: 6 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from turtle.looksharp.net (cc360882-a.strhg1.mi.home.com [24.2.221.22]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1C7BD37BC61 for ; Sat, 18 Mar 2000 23:26:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from bandix@looksharp.net) Received: from localhost (bandix@localhost) by turtle.looksharp.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id CAA67659 for ; Sun, 19 Mar 2000 02:26:13 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from bandix@looksharp.net) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 02:26:13 -0500 (EST) From: "Brandon D. Valentine" To: FreeBSD-STABLE Subject: Re: SMP oddity In-Reply-To: <200003191700.LAA15601@aurora.sol.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 19 Mar 2000, Joe Greco wrote: >There was, at one point, a technical issue regarding the possibility of the >values being wrong. Check the mailing list archives. It was probably a concern over the way APIC worked with the TSC. It appears to be moot point now though. >Incidentally: I will let you imagine what I did to a Sun SS10 that had a >Sun FE nearly hysterical once... got called in to replace a disk and he >just HAD to open up the machine to find out why the banner reported _3_ >CPU's (I don't think there's a blessed configuration with 3, maybe there >is)... found a dual CPU card plus one rather faster single CPU, and swore >that the disk problem ("the disk is DEAD, Jim") might be caused by my >creative CPU engineering. If you'd have had a digital camera back then I'm sure we'd all like to see pictures of the guys face. Too bad they're a rather modern commodity. >I would think that it might be possible to have a similar situation in a >PC unless the BIOS explicitly checks it. > >... Joe It's not possible. APIC is very very picky about which CPUs it will even boot with. If they're not the same processor model and speed the APIC I/O chip won't even initialize, and if they're not the same stepping you end up with periodic crashes no matter what OS you run. ------------------------------------------------------------- | -Brandon D. Valentine bandix at looksharp.net | bandix on EFnet IRC BVRiker on AIM ------------------------------------------------------------- | "...and as for hackers, we note that all of those known to | The Register are so strapped financially that seizing their | property would be tantamount to squeezing blood from a | stone." -- The Register, 02/17/2000 ------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message