]Hi, ] ]On 22.10.2010 03:34, Scott Duplichan wrote: ]> I find an unexpected MTRR setup for my RS780/SB700 UMA board. With ]> a single 1GB DIMM and 256MB UMA size, the variable MTRRs look like this: ]> ]> -----coreboot+seabios----- ]> default memory type: UC ]> variable range 0: 000000000-03FFFFFFF WB ]> variable range 1: 040000000-04FFFFFFF WB ]> variable range 2: 030000000-03FFFFFFF UC ]> variable range 3: disabled ]> variable range 4: disabled ]> variable range 5: disabled ]> variable range 6: disabled ]> variable range 7: disabled ]> ]> Variable range 1 is unexpected. It creates a window of WB-IO, which is ]> highly unusual. ]> ] ]AFAIK if two ranges overlap and one of the ranges is UC, the overlapping ]region will be UC. At least that's what the specs say.
Hello Carl-Daniel, yes you are correct about this rule of overlap. It is well documented and reliable in my experience.
]> -----Production BIOS (AMI):----- ]> default memory type: UC ]> variable range 0: 000000000-01FFFFFFF WB ]> variable range 1: 020000000-02FFFFFFF WB ]> variable range 2: disabled ]> variable range 3: disabled ]> variable range 4: disabled ]> variable range 5: disabled ]> variable range 6: disabled ]> variable range 7: disabled ]> ]> The above is how uma is normally handled. Build up WB ranges until ]> the needed size is reached. ]> ] ]For 1 GB RAM and 256 MB UMA, you have to mark 768 MB as WB. That's OK ]either way (adding up WB ranges or using a UC range to carve a hole). ] ]However, once you have 2 GB RAM and 64 MB UMA, you can do it with two ]ranges: ]00000000-7FFFFFFF WB ]7C000000-7FFFFFFF UC ]or with five ranges: ]00000000-3FFFFFFF WB ]40000000-5FFFFFFF WB ]60000000-6FFFFFFF WB ]70000000-77FFFFFF WB ]78000000-7BFFFFFF WB
One solution to this MTRR exhaustion problem you describe is to just drop the last few ranges. Reduce the E820 entry to match. In this example, you could drop the last two ranges and lose 'only' 192MB or 9% of your memory. Or drop a single range and lose only 64MB (3%). The real question is how many free MTRRs do we need? Only very old operating systems need MTRRs for their own use (or new operating systems running on very old processors).
]In the past we had to deal with range exhaustion, and that's the reason ]why we carve a hole for UMA.
What are the pros and cons of stacking vs carving? In the general case, I am told stacking WB ranges is preferred but I can't remember the justification. For me, carving is fine until proven otherwise. But to do carving without the unwanted WB-IO range, I need to make a new patch.
]It gets especially funny if you have more ]than 4 GB RAM because then you want a hole for PCI devices below 4 GB ]and you need additional ranges above 4 GB.
AMD processors have a nice feature: setting bit 22 (Tom2ForceMemTypeWB) of msr c0010010 (sys_cfg) causes all memory above 4GB to be WB. No variable MTRR ranges are needed for DRAM memory above 4GB on AMD systems. Surely Intel has something like this by now?
]If switching the MTRR allocation is strictly needed for Windows (and ]there is no way to avoid it), thats pretty much the only reason we ]should go away from carving holes with UC.
The only real concern at this time is that an OS could map MMIO to the unexpected WB-IO range. Maybe we should just keep the carving method in place but remove the unexpected WB-IO range.
]Regards, ]Carl-Daniel ] ]-- ]http://www.hailfinger.org/