Re: help ragarding Multiprocessor(MP) Configuration Table

[Brendan Trotter]

Hi,

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 1:09 AM, mandar naik <address@hidden> wrote:
> So we wanted to know how & what MP information is made available to grub on
> Intel core2duo architecture if MP Floating Point structure & MP
> configuration table are not present.
> If Intel core2duo architecture is one of default configuration type then is
> it possible to modify smp-imps.c file to use default configuration settings.
> Also we would like to know if there is similar SMP support provided in GRUB
> 1.97.
> Thanking in anticipation,

The "default configurations" mentioned in Intel's Multi-Processor
Specification haven't been used for over 15 years.

About a decade ago everything started shifting to ACPI, and in the
last few years I've seen a few systems without Intel's (much older) MP
Specification tables or with dummy/incomplete MP specification tables
(although they are still rare - almost all modern computers have both
MP and ACPI). The ACPI tables include a "Multiple APIC Description
Table" which tells you everything that the MP Tables did, and modern
software should check for ACPI tables and use them (and should only
use MP Specification tables if no ACPI tables are found).

Modifying GRUB to suit your specific hardware is a bad idea
(especially when the problem is your software and not the hardware,
firmware or GRUB); and learning how to make software that doesn't work
on other computers and stops working when you change some of the BIOS
settings is also a bad idea.

Use the ACPI tables.


Cheers,

Brendan