Re: Opteron box and 4Gb memory

["J.A. Magallón" <jamagallon@ono.com>]

On Mon, 5 Nov 2007 13:50:40 -0500, lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen) wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 05, 2007 at 07:45:21PM +0100, J.A. Magall?n wrote:
> > Well, problem solved...
> > 
> > I'm going to kill all pc assemblers in the world... Someone should teach them
> > to learn mauals before assembling anything but a power chord.
> > 
> > The memory was not paired, so the motherboard was not interleaving the access.
> > With no inter-node but with inter-module interleaving, and a couple 1Gb sticks
> > for each processor now I get something like:
> > 
> > cicely:~/bn> bn
> > 	name: cicely.cps.unizar.es
> > 	arch: x86-64
> > 	proc: 4 x x86_64 @ 2200 MHz
> > 	ram:  3555 Mb
> > 	os:   unx, Linux, 2.6.23.1-desktop-1mdv
> > 	cc:   gcc-4.3.0
> > vector size   : 8 x 1024 x 1024
> > allocation:     0.02 ms
> > int scl add: ..........   60.56 ms,  138.52 Mips   |   62.96 Mips  /GHz
> > int scl mul: ..........   59.34 ms,  141.36 Mips   |   64.26 Mips  /GHz
> > flt scl add: ..........   59.01 ms,  142.16 Mflops |   64.62 Mflops/GHz
> > flt vec add: ..........   14.79 ms,  567.06 Mflops |  257.75 Mflops/GHz
> > flt scl mul: ..........   59.02 ms,  142.12 Mflops |   64.60 Mflops/GHz
> > flt vec mul: ..........   14.82 ms,  566.19 Mflops |  257.36 Mflops/GHz
> > total:       5019.86 ms
> > 
> > Much better, but not like the other opteron box.
> > 
> > My processors are higher than Rev E0, because the BIOS does not let me choose
> > the 'software' hole. If I activate the 'hardware hole', I see al the memory
> > I can:
> > 
> > cicely:~/bn> free
> >              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> > Mem:       3640628     214496    3426132          0      21240      84184
> > -/+ buffers/cache:     109072    3531556
> > Swap:      4200988          0    4200988
> > 
> > 3.64 Gb. The rest is eaten by the graphics card, as I could read in the
> > AMD site. Don't know if mem=4096 to boot the kernel would help, even if it
> > is possible (don't think so, as it looks like a BIOS mis-feature).
> > The ram is DDR 400.
> 
> The video card is stealing 300MB of ram?  What for?  What does the mtrr
> and e820 map look like with the hardware hole enabled?
> 

(correction, this was not AMD website but SuperMicro's)

I just said the same... Board is a SuperMicro H8DCE. From the FAQ section
at supermicro:

Question
I have an H8DCE motherboard with 4 x 1GB DIMMS installed but the amount of memory displayed in the BIOS is 3.865GB and in 64-bit XP is 3.76GB. I have the hardware memory hole option enabled in BIOS (rev 1.1a). How I can get the board to count the full 4GB of memory?

Answer
The total available size depends on the PCI-e card you are using; some high-end cards may occupy more memory. For example, with a Quadro FX4500 on the H8DCE with the memory hole enabled, 4GB memory will show up as 3728MB in BIOS and 3.64GB in Windows. For some low-end PCI-e VGA cards, it may show up as 4048MB in BIOS.

Why ? Who knows...
Chipset is all nVidia. I have a GeForce 8800GTX with 768 Mb. It eats up
400Mb.

This are my settings:

BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000e6000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000009ffd0000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000009ffd0000 - 000000009ffde000 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 000000009ffde000 - 00000000a0000000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000ff780000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 0000000147000000 (usable)

cicely:~# cat /proc/mtrr
reg00: base=0x100000000 (4096MB), size=1024MB: write-back, count=1
reg01: base=0x140000000 (5120MB), size=  64MB: write-back, count=1
reg02: base=0x144000000 (5184MB), size=  32MB: write-back, count=1
reg03: base=0x146000000 (5216MB), size=  16MB: write-back, count=1
reg04: base=0x00000000 (   0MB), size=2048MB: write-back, count=1
reg05: base=0x80000000 (2048MB), size= 512MB: write-back, count=1

This is with BIOS set for MTRR=Discrete.
With MTRR=Continuous, the mtrr's are simpler, a full range and a non-usable
hole. Which is better for Linux ? Many separate usable zones or one big zone
and an un-usable hole ?

BTW, mtrr formatting should be set to 0x%013lx000, to get them aligned with
nowadays memory amounts and similar to e820 map, 16 hex digits...

> > Anyways, can I trust what dmidecode says ? I installed the ram as the board
> > manual said in banks 1A+1B (not 2A+2B) for each processor, but this program
> > says this:
> > 
> > BANK0   64Mb            BANK4   64Mb
> > BANK1   64Mb            BANK5   64Mb
> > BANK2 1024Mb            BANK6 1024Mb
> > BANK3 1024Mb            BANK7 1024Mb
> > 
> > I would always have thought that BANK0 would be slot 1A in first processor,
> > but it looks like not...
> > And where do the 64 Mb blocks come from ?
> 
> Well if you ahve 4 sticks of 1GB, then I would hope they are installed
> as a pair for each CPU so that both CPUs can have dual channel ram
> directly connected.
> 

That's how they are plugged. The strange thing is that I filled the 1st
and 2nd slot (by mobo manual numbering), but dmidecode (BIOS?) thinks they
are 3rd and 4th. I don't know if it matters, probably not, but who knows...
This s***t of PC architecture is a Pandora's Box.

> I have no idea where the 64Mb comes from.
> 

Nor I do...

--
J.A. Magallon <jamagallon()ono!com>     \               Software is like sex:
                                         \         It's better when it's free
Mandriva Linux release 2008.1 (Cooker) for i586
Linux 2.6.23-jam01 (gcc 4.2.2 20070909 (4.2.2-0.RC.1mdv2008.0)) SMP PREEMPT
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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