Re: PAT support

From: Pavel Machek
Date: Tue Apr 13 2004 - 15:52:39 EST


Hi!

> in your patch, you write
> +/* Here is the PAT's default layout on ia32 cpus when we are done.
> + * PAT0: Write Back
> + * PAT1: Write Combine
> + * PAT2: Uncached
> + * PAT3: Uncacheable
> + * PAT4: Write Through
> + * PAT5: Write Protect
> + * PAT6: Uncached
> + * PAT7: Uncacheable
>
> Is that layout possible?
> There is an errata in the B2 and C1 stepping of the Pentium 4 cpus
> that results in incorrect PAT numbers: the highest bit is ignored by
> the CPU under some circumstances. There's a similar errata (E27) that
> affects all Pentium 3 cpus: The highest bit is always ignored.
> I think we need a fallback to 4 PAT entries.

What about arranging it so that foo is always more restrictive than
foo|4? That way you can get some slowdowns on bad cpus, but it
will always be correct.
--
64 bytes from 195.113.31.123: icmp_seq=28 ttl=51 time=448769.1 ms

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