Re: Opteron box and 4Gb memory

From: Lennart Sorensen
Date: Mon Nov 05 2007 - 13:50:49 EST


On Mon, Nov 05, 2007 at 07:45:21PM +0100, J.A. Magall?n wrote:
> Well, problem solved...
>
> I'm going to kill all pc assemblers in the world... Someone should teach them
> to learn mauals before assembling anything but a power chord.
>
> The memory was not paired, so the motherboard was not interleaving the access.
> With no inter-node but with inter-module interleaving, and a couple 1Gb sticks
> for each processor now I get something like:
>
> cicely:~/bn> bn
> name: cicely.cps.unizar.es
> arch: x86-64
> proc: 4 x x86_64 @ 2200 MHz
> ram: 3555 Mb
> os: unx, Linux, 2.6.23.1-desktop-1mdv
> cc: gcc-4.3.0
> vector size : 8 x 1024 x 1024
> allocation: 0.02 ms
> int scl add: .......... 60.56 ms, 138.52 Mips | 62.96 Mips /GHz
> int scl mul: .......... 59.34 ms, 141.36 Mips | 64.26 Mips /GHz
> flt scl add: .......... 59.01 ms, 142.16 Mflops | 64.62 Mflops/GHz
> flt vec add: .......... 14.79 ms, 567.06 Mflops | 257.75 Mflops/GHz
> flt scl mul: .......... 59.02 ms, 142.12 Mflops | 64.60 Mflops/GHz
> flt vec mul: .......... 14.82 ms, 566.19 Mflops | 257.36 Mflops/GHz
> total: 5019.86 ms
>
> Much better, but not like the other opteron box.
>
> My processors are higher than Rev E0, because the BIOS does not let me choose
> the 'software' hole. If I activate the 'hardware hole', I see al the memory
> I can:
>
> cicely:~/bn> free
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 3640628 214496 3426132 0 21240 84184
> -/+ buffers/cache: 109072 3531556
> Swap: 4200988 0 4200988
>
> 3.64 Gb. The rest is eaten by the graphics card, as I could read in the
> AMD site. Don't know if mem=4096 to boot the kernel would help, even if it
> is possible (don't think so, as it looks like a BIOS mis-feature).
> The ram is DDR 400.

The video card is stealing 300MB of ram? What for? What does the mtrr
and e820 map look like with the hardware hole enabled?

> Anyways, can I trust what dmidecode says ? I installed the ram as the board
> manual said in banks 1A+1B (not 2A+2B) for each processor, but this program
> says this:
>
> BANK0 64Mb BANK4 64Mb
> BANK1 64Mb BANK5 64Mb
> BANK2 1024Mb BANK6 1024Mb
> BANK3 1024Mb BANK7 1024Mb
>
> I would always have thought that BANK0 would be slot 1A in first processor,
> but it looks like not...
> And where do the 64 Mb blocks come from ?

Well if you ahve 4 sticks of 1GB, then I would hope they are installed
as a pair for each CPU so that both CPUs can have dual channel ram
directly connected.

I have no idea where the 64Mb comes from.

--
Len Sorensen
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