[coreboot] Is PI-AM2RS780G supported ?

[Alois Schlögl]

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David Hendricks wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:30 AM, David Hendricks <dhendrix at google.com>wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 2:28 AM, Alois Schlögl <alois.schloegl at tugraz.at>wrote:
>>
>>>  The reason for asking is the bug as described here:
>>> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13573
>>>
>>> The bug is affecting my research at the university.
>>> It was suggested that a Bios-update could solve the problem.
>>
>> IIRC you can disable thermal throttling, but it's usually not a good idea
>> if you expect to keep your machine running with reasonable performance under
>> load. If the vendor BIOS had the proper tables (See section 2.4.2 on
>> P-States in the AMD BIOS and Kernel Developer's Guide for Fam10 processors),
>> your CPU would slow itself down to avoid generating too much heat. If you
>> disable thermal throttling and continue to run your workload, your CPU will
>> hit "Tjunction" at around 116 degrees C and shut itself off abruptly,
>> possibly after physical damage has been done to the CPU or the socket.
>>
>> I would suggest starting with something much simpler, like making sure you
>> have quality thermal transfer compound applied in the proper quantity for
>> your CPUs. I know it sounds stupid, but I have seen many machines from many
>> datacenters with very powerful rack cooling overheat under heavy loads due
>> to improperly applied thermal grease. There are many tutorials and videos on
>> how to do this. Make sure you clean off the old thermal grease first with a
>> high-concentration isopropyl alcohol (>90%) first.
>>
> 
> Oh, and while you're at it make sure the heatsinks are securely fastened.
> After you re-apply thermal grease, tighten the screws such that they will
> not turn any more. The mounting points on the motherboard will ensure the
> maximum threshold is not exceeded, though I suggest tightening one about
> 80-90%, then the second one 100%, then finish the first one to apply the
> pressure more evenly.
> 
> Just another very silly thing that can cause unexpected behavior under heavy
> workloads...
> 

Thanks for these hints. That sound very reasonable to me. If understood
you correctly, the shutdown occurs because the current bios is missing
the _PSS table. Update the bios would resolve this, and re-apply thermal
grease, would throttle the CPU later or not at all.

In order to update the bios, I tried followed also this approach
   http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2195208
as well as this
   http://manual.sidux.com/en/bios-freedos-en.htm

The final test showed that my USB-stick is bootable. Unfortunately, the
system never boots from USB. I changed 1st, 2nd and 3rd boot device
to USB-floppy, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM and turned off HDD, no boot device was
found. I guess this is another problem of the current bios. Therefore,
coreboot would be really appreciated.



Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Judging from experience, the legal review happens faster if we can show
> more (or more interesting) reference customers, so if you plan to use
> coreboot on 780G/SB700 as part of university research, we'd tell AMD
> about this immediately.
> 
	

Carl,

you can tell AMD, that I'm working on some numerical methods that can
efficiently handle missing values (encoded as NaN)

http://hci.tugraz.at/schloegl/matlab/NaN/
http://hci.tugraz.at/schloegl/matlab/tsa/

These methods are quite useful in various applications of biomedical
signal processing (like electroencephalography)
http://biosig.sourceforge.net/
http://hci.tugraz.at/schloegl/

These methods could be useful for Brain-Computer interface research, and
for a better understanding of the human brain. Perhaps, the methods will
be also useful in other application areas.


Best regards,
   Alois









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