> > Burning out a fuse to make the switch from MP->XP may affect more
> > than just the cpuid capabilities. The fact is _we don't know_
> Right, so why assume it doesn't work?
Because there are cases where it. does. not. work.
> People with "true" SMP CPUs can have problems as well. Does this mean
> SMP CPUs are not SMP capable? If only one person is having problems,
> chances are there's a problem someplace.
Such problems get researched, and warnings such as the one in
my patch get added. Take a look through smpboot.c and friends.
We support a lot of broken hardware, but there's a difference between
broken (buggy) and running something outside of its specification.
> Could it be a faulty motherboard?
The reason we have DMI table scanning on boot up.
> Mismatched CPUs?
Another unsupported configuration we should at least warn about.
Note however, that some quad systems allow 2 different pairs.
> Bad memory?
The reason memtest86 came to be.
> Bad CPU?
See errata workarounds in smpboot.c & setup.c
> Bad power supply?
Running underrated PSUs on modern hw is asking for trouble.
Unless you think AMD approved PSUs are another marketing gimmik
to make people pay out more.
> There's an awful lot of variables here.
Sure. And this eliminates one such variable.
regards,
Dave.
-- | Dave Jones. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk | SuSE Labs- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/