Andrei Dorofeev wrote:

> A simple check that CPU IDs that are members of
> the same P-state domain should always belong to
> the same socket/package would be enough here to
> catch this problem early at boot and maybe throw
> a warning that suggests getting BIOS updated.
> 

We can do this kind of checking, but we should be aware
that this is not true on the all platforms.

Thanks,
-Aubrey

> - Andrei
> 
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Li, Aubrey
> <aubrey.li at intel.com> wrote:
>> tesla-dev-bounces at opensolaris.org wrote:
>> 
>>> Mark Haywood <> wrote:
>>>> Mark Haywood wrote:
>>>>> Li, Aubrey wrote:
>>>>>> Hi Andrei,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Andrei Dorofeev wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Aubrey,
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> What version of the X8DTN BIOS are you using? ?I have filed
>>>>>>> this issue back in February on premier.intel.com and it
>>>>>>> should've been resolved by now. ? Do you see this with BIOS
>>>>>>> version 3059W? 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Right, right, the version is 3059W! And this is the newest
>>>>>> version. From the BIOS changelog, they tested windows, redhat
>>>>>> linux, I'm not sure if they care about what solaris reported, :(
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Don't give up on using _PSD because of this.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I believe before NHM, _PSD is seldom implemented. Using the
>>>>>> vendor specific CPU topology should be an acceptable way to
>>>>>> build domain info. I admit I don't have the knowledge about the
>>>>>> other CPU vendor, like SPARC and AMD, what's the benefit of
>>>>>> using _PSD? Othering than introducing panic, ;)
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> That's a very good question. What is the benefit of the _PSD? I
>>>>> believe the _PSD was introduced to prevent Solaris and other
>>>>> operating systems from having to do exactly what you are proposing
>>>>> (i.e., introducing vendor specific details of processor state
>>>>> domains into the operating system). The _PSD is supposed to
>>>>> define a standard way for operating systems to digest the domain
>>>>> data. Unless there is a really compelling reason to ignore the
>>>>> _PSD, I would suggest that we continue to use it.
>>>> 
>>>> How about a compromise. Since the _PSD often doesn't exist, we have
>>>> to be able to determine the domains from the topology. Since we
>>>> have to do this anyway, why don't we digest the _PSD and verify it
>>>> afterwards using the topology. Why do this? So that we can report
>>>> bad _PSDs to the BIOS developers so that the _PSDs become more
>>>> reliable in the future. If a faulty _PSD is identified we can log a
>>>> message to the console and use domains built from the topology. At
>>>> some point it would be nice if we didn't have to continue
>>>> determining the domains using topology. Sound reasonable?
>>> That sounds a good suggestion. In early stage, we may need to reveal
>>> bugs in BIOS implementation and push BIOS to behave correctly.
>>> Eventually BIOS should be robust enough so we could switch to BIOS.
>>> If we give up _PSD, it seems we are on the opposite side of
>>> ACPI spect then.
>>> 
>> 
>> BIOS is not ACPI, hehe. If we use topology to check, why not use it
>> at all? why we need to verify BIOS bug? ?Anyway, the suggestion
>> works to me. 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> -Aubrey
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