[coreboot] K8 machine with (a lot of) ram from 2 vendors keeps resetting

Ward Vandewege ward at gnu.org
Thu Sep 3 04:03:39 CEST 2009


Hi Marc,

On Wed, Sep 02, 2009 at 04:03:45PM -0600, Marc Jones wrote:
> > With the proprietary BIOS, this setup works perfectly. That said, the manual
> > for the board does say it's not recommended to mix memory types. Our system
> > integrator mentions that when 16 banks are used, the memory runs at maximum
> > 533MHz.
> 
> As we talked about, it looks like the memory is sized correctly and
> the next thing to try forcing the memory speed slower. 8 dual rank
> dimms (16 banks) s[eed limitation might be spec'd or errata. A check
> might need to go into the main k8 mem init code.

I've forced the speed down to 533MHz with this patch:

--- src/northbridge/amd/amdk8/raminit_f.code(revision 4625)
+++ src/northbridge/amd/amdk8/raminit_f.code(working copy)
@@ -1811,6 +1811,10 @@
    }
    min_latency = 3;
 
+   // Force minimum cycle time to 3.75ns (i.e. 266MHz)
+   min_cycle_time = 0x375;
+
+   printk_raminit("1 bios_cycle_time: %08x\n", bios_cycle_time);
    printk_raminit("1 min_cycle_time: %08x\n", min_cycle_time);
 
    /* Compute the least latency with the fastest clock supported

Which appears to do the right thing, but the behavior is unchanged. Here's a
boot log prior to the patch:

  http://ward.vandewege.net/coreboot/h8dme/minicom-20090902-with-64G-samsung-on-cpu1-kingston-on-cpu2-before-533MHz-limit.cap

and here's after the patch:

  http://ward.vandewege.net/coreboot/h8dme/minicom-20090902-with-64G-samsung-on-cpu1-kingston-on-cpu2-after-533MHz-limit.cap

This is with all samsung ram on CPU1 and all kingston ram on CPU2, as you
suggested on irc.

Anything else I should try?

Thanks,
Ward.

-- 
Ward Vandewege <ward at fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation - Senior Systems Administrator




More information about the coreboot mailing list