Re: Weird performance behaviour in 7.0

bruce_at_zuhause.mn.org writes:
 > Richard Todd writes:
 >  > 
 >  > bruce_at_zuhause.mn.org writes:
 >  > > Richard Todd writes:
 >  > >  > This wouldn't by any chance be an Intel 965-chipset-based motherboard
 >  > >  > with 4G or more of memory, would it?  Because there's an interesting
 >  > >  > little bug in the BIOS on some of those boards which causes the
 >  > >  > cache-control registers to incorrectly declare a chunk of main memory
 >  > >  > as uncacheable.  This results in random slowdowns depending on whether
 >  > >  > your process lands in the "bad" zone of memory or not.  See 
 >  > >  > http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.stable/50135/ for more details. 
 >  > >
 >  > > Bingo!  This is a Intel DG965WH with 4 GB of memory.  I don't think I
 >  > > can downgrade to the 1669 firmware because of the processor I'm
 >  > > using.  The Fedora thread says that there's a hack to do the following
 >  > > in linux to fix the "bad" zone
 > 
 > Embarrassingly, after I posted this, I realized that I was not at the
 > latest BIOS level, and not at a recommended level for my processor, so
 > I flashed it with the latest, version 1719.  Although in the Fedora
 > thread Jussit said that it didn't fix the problem, it seems to have
 > fixed it for me.  BTW, I was able to get the SMAP information at the
 > loader prompt.
 > 
 > I'm curious, though, should I be worried about the memcontrol list
 > entries that are listed as "set-by-firmware active bogus"?
 > 
 > Type '?' for a list of commands, 'help for wore detailed
 > OK smap
 > SMAP type=01 base=0000000000000000 len=000000000008f000
 > SMAP type=02 base=000000000008f000 len=0000000000011000
 > SMAP type=02 base=00000000000e0000 len=0000000000020000
 > SMAP type=01 base=0000000000100000 len=00000000cf461000
 > SMAP type=02 base=00000000cf561000 len=000000000000d000
 > SMAP type=0l base=00000000cf56e000 len=000000000009c000
 > SMAP type=04 base=00000000cf60a000 len=00000000000df000
 > SMAP type=01 base=00000000cf6e9000 len-0000000000009000
 > SMAP type=03 base=00000000cf6f2000 len=000000000000d000
 > SMAP type=01 base=00000000cf6ff000 len=0000000000001000
 > SMAP type=02 base=00000000cf700000 len=0000000000100000
 > SMAP type=02 base=00000000cf800000 len=0000000000800000
 > SMAP type=02 base=00000000fff00000 len=0000000000100000
 > SMAP type=01 base=0000000100000000 len=000000002c000000
 > OK

 > 0xff000/0x1000 BIOS uncacheable fixed-base fixed-length set-by-firmware active 
 > 0x0/0xf080000000 BIOS write-back set-by-firmware active bogus 
 > 0x80000000/0xf040000000 BIOS write-back set-by-firmware active bogus 
 > 0xc0000000/0xf010000000 BIOS write-back set-by-firmware active bogus 
 > 0xcf800000/0xf000800000 BIOS uncacheable set-by-firmware active bogus 
 > 0xcf700000/0xf000100000 BIOS uncacheable set-by-firmware active bogus 
 > 0x100000000/0xf020000000 BIOS write-back set-by-firmware active bogus 
 > 0x120000000/0xf008000000 BIOS write-back set-by-firmware active bogus 

I hate to follow up to my own postings, but it seems to me that this
memcontrol list is missing 0x4000000 (64 MB).  I'm using the onboard
video. I'm not sure if this means that it's never used by the OS, or
that I'm just lucky that I haven't yet experienced a slowdown.  With
the old BIOS, I couldn't run a make release without hitting it, but as
far as I can tell, I haven't seen a problem yet even though I ran
another make release and ran the repeated tight CPU loops I was using
to test before.

Copyright (c) 1992-2008 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 7.0-RC1 #2: Mon Jan 14 03:17:48 UTC 2008
    toor_at_orca.zuhause.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/ORCA
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q6600  _at_ 2.40GHz (2407.20-MHz
K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x6fb  Stepping = 11
  Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0xe3bd<SSE3,RSVD2,MON,DS_CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM>
  AMD Features=0x20100800<SYSCALL,NX,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
  Cores per package: 4
usable memory = 4202840064 (4008 MB)
avail memory  = 4042080256 (3854 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <INTEL  DG965WH >