Re: git: kernel - SMP - "Fix AP #%d (PHY# %d) failed" issues

[Matthew Dillon <dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

:Ok, that's nuts.  Completely nuts.  I'm surprised that you could even
:debug it and get a reliable method to work around this.  I'm very
:surprised that an SMI interrupt is depending on or changing state in
:such a way that things simply hang.  They're supposed to be transparent,
:other than userland "loosing" some time...
:
:Yuck, yuck, yuck.
:
:Possibly we only need the delay on "old" style SMP boxes with external
:APIC's?  IE: on new hardware with the stuff on-chip, we may be able to
:get away with a much smaller delay in general?
:
:-Toby.

    I don't know.  Typically a cpu has to be held in RESET long
    enough for its internal clearing state machine to run, which can
    involve microcode too.  But today's cpus are so blasted fast I'd
    be surprised if that took anywhere near as long as it would have
    on the old Pentiums.

    If no SMI interrupt is detected the code will use the 10ms spec.
    That's an attempt to not break older pre-USB-keyboard machines
    and BIOSes with a delay that is too short.

    In testing on my Shuttle no SMI interrupt appeared to be running
    if I unplugged the USB keyboard before boot, or if the keyboard
    is plugged into certain ports (but not others).  It is very
    weird.

    Yah, I had to reboot the poor shuttle box about 50 times to test
    various strategies.

    My guess is that Microsoft has code to actually disable the SMI
    interrupt during AP startup.  There is some code floating around
    FreeBSD to do that for certain Intel chipsets for MacBooks but
    it isn't universal.  My Phenom-based shuttles exhibited the behavior
    and they certainly aren't MacBooks.  Insofar as I know there is
    no standard way.  Theoretically disabling the LAPIC entirely will
    kill the SMI interrupt but that didn't seem to work when I tried
    it (disabling it around the long 10ms sleep and then reenabling
    it).

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon@backplane.com>