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Major Linux/Athlon CPU bug discovered
GeorgeFrancisco writes "I recently installed the nVidia drivers so I could play TuxRacer on my Athlon. Problem is it kept inexplicably hanging Linux. Now I know why. The CPU bug affects Athlon/Duron/Athlon MP AGP users. Fortunately there's a way around it, and: "Alan [Cox] is going to try to add some kind of Athlon/AGP CPU bug detection code to the kernel so that it will be able to auto-downgrade to 4K pages when necessary." Read more on the Gentoo Linux site."
Karma whoring, here I come. Hopefully this server can withstand a mild slashdotting. Link
The site seems to be down. However, last week, I contacted nVidia about this problem on my two dual Ahtlon MP workstations (random hangs when OpenGL is invoked). So the quick answer is you can
Boot your system with following option on your kernel command line: "mem=nopentium"
or
Disable AGP in XFree86 config (i.e. Option "NvAGP" "0" in the "Devices" section).
nVidia clued me into the first approach about a week and a half ago. It made my system completely stable. However, there was still some texture flakiness in some OpenGL applications. Since my workstations are number crunchers (and thus Quake FPS don't matter to me), the latter option eliminated both the stability problems and the texture flakiness (at the expense of some graphics speed).
By the way, nVidia mentioned the same issue exists on Win2K / Athlon boxes.
Enjoy,
Kevin
Shit happens. Work around it.
Just as an aside, if you ever deal with ultrasparcs, you'll quickly find that the majority of the code used is 32 bit.
The reason for it is simple; most applications will run slower at 64 bit than at 32 bit. The ultrasparc chips were designed to take this into account. Hell, due to a firmware bug, solaris on my ultra 1 installs as a 32 bit kernel by defualt - and runs no slower because of it (although it can't run 64 bit apps that way). After a firmware patch, it is easy to change to running the 64 bit kernel though.
In all reality, why would most apps need 64 bit integers and whatnot? Most don't, and doing so is a waste of memory. If the processor is designed right, it can handle 32 bit code with no problems whatsoever.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Funny, I knew something was wrong...
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Quake 3 demo was run with \timedemo 1 and \demo DEMO001 . Each test was run three times. The system load average was < 0.5 before Quake 3 was run.
Without mem=nopentium
FPS = 79.4 (79.4, 79.4, 79.4)
With mem=nopentium
FPS = 79.2 (79.1, 79.3, 79.2)
System tested:
Athlon 850, 384MB RAM, Geforce 1 DDR, VIA KT133 Chipset
Athlon/Duron/K7 optimised 2.4.17 kernel (optimising the kernel above pentium makes very little difference though)
NVidia 1.0-2313 video drivers using agpgart
Mandrake 8.0
Quake 3 settings
Texture depth = 16 bits
Colour depth = 16 bits
Geometric detail = High
Texture detail = High
Dynamic lights = On
Video mode = 1024x768
Looks like there is a difference but it's very slight (0.003%) but my benchmarks aren't very scientific. Either way, if there is an improvement in stability this tradeoff is easily worth it. Here's hoping that you don't run linux just for it's Quake 3 scores though...
Several processors had self-test instructions known as "HCF". The 6800 family and the 6502 had such instructions. They caused the processor to start fetching consecutive locations, thus continuously incrementing the address bus. Didn't damage the processor, even if you left it running that way. The "Catch Fire" was a figurative description of what was happening on the address bus, nothing more.
On the original NMOS 6502, about 13 of the undefined opcodes had this effect. This was the most common cause of computer lockups if the code went into the weeds.
On some of the later 6800 family members, the test instructions were actually documented, but Motorola's published description did not include any mnemonmic for them.
You may want to take a look at the benchmarks posted later.
Maybe it sheds some light on this issue.
Basically, if you run "cat /proc/cpuinfo" and see these:
cpu family: 6
model : 6
stepping : 2
Then you should be safe.