Don't recognizing SMP...

[Alexander Sack]

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:52 AM, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Monday 07 April 2008 02:45:47 pm Alexander Sack wrote:
>  > On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 5:43 AM, Andrei Kolu <antik at bsd.ee> wrote:
>  > > On Monday 31 March 2008 12:31:49 한원희 wrote:
>  > >  > I installed FreeBSD 7.0 on HP DL 380.
>  > >  >
>  > >  > This is a mptable result.
>  > >  >
>  > >  > > # mptable
>  > >  > > Processors:     APIC ID Version State           Family  Model   Step
>  > >  > > Flags 0       0x14    BSP, usable     6       2       1       0x0381
>  > >  > > 6 0x14    AP, usable      15      2       9       0xbfebfbff
>  > >  >
>  > >  > 2 way cpus are same as 3.0GHz Xeon CPU. But they have different
>  > >  > Family, Step, and Flags.
>  > >
>  > >  SMP does NOT work with cpus with different steppings. You should find
>  > > other matching pair for smp to work.
>  >
>  > Then this needs to be FIXED because MANY OEMs ship mixed stepping
>  > processors as Intel now supports it....
>
>  FreeBSD itself doesn't enforce this, we use whatever CPUs we find in the table
>  and we don't actually bother reading the family/model/etc. from the APs at
>  all.  Assuming this is a non-ancient computer and non-ancient FreeBSD (5.2 or
>  later) then FreeBSD isn't using the MP Table at all but the ACPI MADT table
>  (available via acpidump -t).

I would assume that as well.  Yes it matters what steppings are mixed
in terms of support but Intel DOES support a number of mixed steppings
and OEMs like HP have shipped mixed stepping Proliant machines (I was
on the fore-front of this issue with another platform so I know this
to be fact).  In fact there is some public documentation about this is
you can stand Intel's search feature on their website.... :D!

-aps