Re: 2.6.22-rc1 does not boot on VIA C3_2 cause of X86_CMPXCHG64

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Thu May 17 2007 - 00:52:36 EST


Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Wed, 16 May 2007, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> It gets turned on by the code in arch/i386/kernel/cpu. It's just that
>> the new code that Andi added runs during setup, i.e. in real mode, so
>> *way* earlier than that.
>
> Ahh. Do we really need it that early?

The reason to do it early is so that we can still get a message out if
the CPU doesn't have the necessary features. This is generic code and
not specific to CX8.

Since I'm rewriting the setup code in C, I have added code to enable
features on VIA and Transmeta CPUs (there was already code in there to
enable features on AMD; Intel isn't known to hide any features other
than PAE on 400 MHz FSB Pentium-M.)

I think the early feature detection makes good sense. It's a heckuva
lot nicer to get a message on your screen saying that you can't boot
this kernel on this CPU than a crash, or an early_printk which may never
actually get to you.

-hpa
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