[coreboot] K8 and Fam10 CAR

Carl-Daniel Hailfinger c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net
Wed Aug 6 15:18:43 CEST 2008


Hi Marc,

I'm currently working to unify K8 and Fam10 CAR to use the same code at
runtime (as opposed to buildtime #ifdefs). While this may not be a goal
for v2, I definitely want to try it for v3.

A few questions/comments about the CAR code:
- Only Fam10 APs are treated specially. APs of older generations seem to
be unhandled. Did older generations treat each core as BSP (code seems
to suggest that) or were there other special provisions?
- "Errata 193: Disable clean copybacks to L3 cache to allow cached ROM."
Erratum 193 seems to be unlisted in public data sheets. If it is the
famous L3 problem, we might want to enable the workaround only on
affected revisions.
- CAR goes from 0xC8000 to 0xCFFFF. Assuming GlobalVarSize=0 (untrue,
but easier to calculate), BSP stack will be from 0xCC000 to 0xCFFFF and
AP stacks will be below 0xCBFFF.
* With the current settings (32k CAR total, 1k per AP, 16K for the BSP)
the scheme will fall apart if the highest NodeID shifted by the number
of CoreID bits is 16 or higher. The BKDG indicates that the number of
CoreID bits is 2, so a NodeID of 4 or higher will break.
* There is no good place to store the printk() buffer in CAR. On Geode
and i586, the printk buffer runs from the lowest address of the CAR area
to the middle. Keeping that design will result in the AP stacks
colliding with the printk buffer. Limiting the size of the printk buffer
dynamically would work unless there are more than 15 cores in the
system, where even a printk buffer of zero size would clobber one AP
stack. The other alternative is to keep the printk buffer size fixed and
let the AP stacks eat into BSP stack space.
- Is there any reason on any K8 or later processor supported by the
current CAR code not to use 64k CAR?
- Is 1k enough stack for the APs, given some stack-heavy functions in v3?
- Can the K8 processors work reliably with 0x1e1e1e1e settings in the
fixed MTRR or can the Fam10 processors work with 0x06060606?

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

-- 
http://www.hailfinger.org/





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