[coreboot] [Patch] SSE & SSE2

Stefan Reinauer stepan at coresystems.de
Wed Mar 17 00:29:45 CET 2010


On 3/16/10 5:31 PM, Myles Watson wrote:
> This patch selects SSE & SSE2 in the socket if one exists (except for
> AMD since there are many sockets for two models).
>
> The reasoning is that sockets can support multiple models of CPUS for
> intel, and SSE & SSE2 settings need to be based on the least capable CPU.
>
> It's all correct as far as Google tells me.
Not as far as Wikipedia is concerned. I think we should be careful as
this easily breaks the code in very nasty places (especially SSE chooses
the registers for ROMCC, so this definitely breaks some boards)

The settings have to be the most conservative, not the best possible.
That means if there is a single CPU for a socket that does not have SSE,
SSE has to be off for that socket. Choosing SSE to be on because there
is a single CPU for that socket that has SSE will break other systems.


http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_SIMD_Extensions

> Slot 1 - SSE but not SSE2
Slot 1 is used by Pentium II, but only Pentium III has SSE.
Also, Celeron only has SSE starting from Coppermine. Covington and
Mendocino don't have SSE.
> Slot 2 - SSE but not SSE2
I think this is also wrong. Slot2 was then Xeon slot, but it also
started with Pentium II based CPUs, which do NOT have SSE.
> Via C3 - SSE but not SSE2
Only Nehemiah and newer have SSE. All Samuel, Samuel2, Ezra and Ezra-T
CPUs don't.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_C3


I stopped after checking three of the ones you changed, because all
three are wrong.. I think the code should not be changed. It's likely
that the whole table you were using to do the matching was not
describing what we need but instead the "socket capabilities" (i.e. the
biggest feature set usable with that socket)

Stefan





More information about the coreboot mailing list