> This is precisely the sort of thing that BIOS/firmware-level SMI
> handlers do, particularly those that have monitoring or management
> features. Try to determine if the kernel is doing anything during this
> time. If the entire kernel seems to be frozen, talk to the people who
> wrote the firmware.
There is no such thing as BIOS on this MPC8540 embedded system.
I guess he is also using some bootloader which just gives full
control to the linux kernel.
Florian:
Check the IP route chache flushes, as Eric mentioned.
I'm working on the MPC854x as well. If you send me your scripts,
I can give them a run here to gather more information.
(I'm about to update my kernels here)