Re: hardware requirements

> From: Charles Swiger <cswiger_at_mac.com>
> Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 08:51:45 -0500
> Sender: owner-freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org
> 
> On Mar 8, 2005, at 10:41 AM, Si wrote:
> > I just wanted to check that a Centrio processor is
> > fine to run BSD. couldn't see a note of it anywhere.
> 
> "Centrino"?  It's fine.  :-)
> 
> There have been some recent work done to really support the power 
> management and CPU speed capabilities of that sort of hardware, too, 
> but you might want to ask about potential machines on 
> <freebsd-mobile_at_...>

As has been pointed out before, "Centrino" is an Intel marketing term for
a system having several components and there is no "Centrino"
processor. Any "Centrino" labeled system has a Pentium-M CPU 9one of
about three different cores, I think, although I don't know if the Sonoma
core is shipping in volume. It's not a P4-M or a P3-M, although it is
generally believed to be closer in design to a P3-M.

As far as power management goes, the framework will be in 5.4, but the
drivers (ESST for a P-M) have not been imported nor has powerd. If you
want to play with them, they can be pulled from HEAD and built on a
5-Stable system. I suspect that Nate Lawson will MFC them to 5-Stable
pretty quickly after 5.4 is released and RELENG_5 is re-opened. The ICH
SpeedStep support in Current is working quite well on my laptop, but I am
not happy with powerd just yet. (I have been trying different tweaks in
the code this morning.) I understand the the Enhanced SpeedStep for P-Ms
is also working well. Since the power management is closely tied to
ACPI, it's discussed on acpi_at_ quite a bit and also on mobile_at_.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman_at_es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634