[Pc_Support] It's here!

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sat, 2005-11-05 at 01:56 -0500, Phil Barnett wrote:
> nvidia drivers working here... (compiled)
> $ uname -a
> Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.13-1.1532_FC4 #1 Thu Oct 20 01:30:08 EDT 2005 
> i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

I think he was referring to ...
  1.  Opteron 2xx (or 8xx) series (dual to 8-way)
  2.  Linux/x86-64 kernel

AMD will always have to deal with the fact that it's architecture
doesn't have full OS support yet (except for maybe in Solaris), so it
has to ensure that it's "front-side bottleneck" compatibility for
assumptions in the OS work flawlessly.  Unfortunately, there are always
issues with that -- because of the extra coherency placed in hardware.

So the fact that the Opteron has compatibility issues with video and
other I/O designed for Intel platforms doesn't surprise me.  Intel is
just now getting into multiple FSBs with its new Socket-771 platform,
and will run into much of what AMD already learned on the Athlon MP.
But even then, they don't have the issue that AMD has -- multiple I/O
channels.  ;->

I'd be interest in any links he has to those issues mentioned.  I'd like
to know more about them, because I want to know where AMD's backward
compatibility on the interconnect is still lacking.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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