Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 16:08:45 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 16:08:35 -0500 Received: from rtlab.med.cornell.edu ([140.251.145.175]:15503 "HELO openlab.rtlab.org") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id convert rfc822-to-8bit; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 16:08:25 -0500 Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 16:08:24 -0500 (EST) From: "Calin A. Culianu" To: Martin Eriksson Cc: Subject: Re: What Athlon chipset is most stable in Linux? In-Reply-To: <001201c16c45$dc2b6820$0201a8c0@HOMER> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Martin Eriksson wrote: > I'm hearing rumours about my University wanting to set up a cluster with AMD > Athlon XP+DDR computers, so I wonder what chipset is most stable under > Linux? > > I assume it's the AMD DDR chipset, but I want to be pretty sure. > > Btw, do compilators currently optimize for the third floating-point unit in > Athlon XP processors? Well, here's my little anecdote: We bought 33 1.4 GHz AMD Athlons (non-XP) with the slightly deprecated VIA KT266 Chipset (Spacewalker AK31 motherboards.. not exactly the Lexus of the M/B world but oh well).. Anyway, after trying various (2.4) kernel versions, both with and without the new VM, both with and without Alan's magik, I can say that the only way we got 99% uptime on these systems (as opposed to like the 70% uptime I was getting from random kernel oopses) was to turn any Athlon and/or Pentium optimizations off when compiling the kernel. With any form of compilation for a CPU >386, the kernel would crash on at least 2 of the boxes per day. The oops stack trace seemed to always indicate a crash when in the paging code.. so it was a virtual memory problem? (I can only speculate and I haven't bothered to investigate much further). I am not sure if I encountered some unknown bug in my motherboard that needs some yet undiscovered workaround or what. All I can say is stay away from the KT266 chipset (however the newer KT266A seems to work fine based on what I have seen and am told) if you can. But then again I may be crazy and/or there may be workarounds or bios fixes for my problem, if it was really kernel-related. (I suspect it was, but haven't bothered to figure out exactly how to reproduce it so as to submit a patch.. the systems would crash randomly and invesitigating it futher seemed onerous). -Calin > > _____________________________________________________ > | Martin Eriksson > | MSc CSE student, department of Computing Science > | Ume? University, Sweden > > > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ > - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/