News Group Posts

smp cpu2 slow

From: Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com>
Subject: Re: Any Known Issue with SMP Ver 1.1.1Ga for OpenServer 5.0.6?
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 22:13:31 GMT
References: <ciHw9.166205$%h2.53807@news02.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>
<3DC43BC9.68968BE0@tkg.ca> 

Mike Brown wrote:

> JP wrote:

> > The system has two Xeon processors running SMP 1.1.1Ga.  The problem will
> > disappear if I keep rebooting and run sar to verify.  There is another way
> > to bring the %idle back to 100.  The trick is to deactivate the second CPU.
> > That way I can see %sys shown as zero and %idle go back to 100.

> There are some issues with new Xeons that may cause slow performance.
> 
> - Make sure HyperThreading/Jackson Technology is turned off in the BIOS.
> 
> - Load OSS648a
> 
> A consistent answer to your problem would be a CPU initialization problem
> that causes the CPUs to run slower.  The minor amount of SYS load would
> not show up on a fast CPU, but may take up 1-2% on a slow CPU.

That's what I think the problem is, too.  But in his earlier posts, the
`sar` output shows the CPU as "PentIII".  I don't think we've ever
announced Pentium 4 family CPUs (including today's "Xeon with no mention
of Pentium" P4 family CPUs) as "PentIII".  The problems fixed by oss648a
do not have any effect on Pentium 3 family CPUs, including Pentium 3
Xeon's.  Also, he posted "%clock" outputs showing that the first CPU is
1.0GHz, a speed which I believe is slower than any production P4-family
Xeon that has been shipped.

On the gripping hand, "JP" has resisted all attempts to give a good
description of his system, so who knows.

I'd like to see output of:

  hwconfig -h
  hw -v

from the system.  I'd also like him to run those once on a "good" boot
and once on a "bad", diff the results, and report any interesting
differences.  (Do _not_ particularly want to see two entire sets of the
output.)  When posting that, make sure your news posting program does
not spuriously wordwrap the output.

>Bela<
 

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