Hyper Threading & A Xeon Processor

March 18th, 2004, 8:02 am

This is a Dual Xeon 2.2ghz with 4gb of ram 2x 36gb 15k rpm scsi drives... If I am correct, these Xeon processors have 'Hyper Threading' capabilities.

CPU states: cpu user nice system irq softirq iowait idle
total 1.4% 0.0% 0.9% 0.4% 0.4% 0.4% 96.0%
cpu00 2.9% 0.0% 0.9% 0.0% 0.0% 0.9% 95.1%
cpu01 0.0% 0.0% 0.9% 0.9% 0.9% 0.0% 97.0%
Mem: 4061104k av, 2042980k used, 2018124k free, 0k shrd, 36948k buff
775308k actv, 483268k in_d, 30384k in_c
Swap: 4040244k av, 0k used, 4040244k free 1734076k cached


[root@fx www]# uname -r
2.4.21-4.ELsmp

Below is the entire Lilo.conf

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
linear

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.7-10.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda1


Everything looks correct if we were just looking for hardware recognition of the two physical processors. However, I should be seeing four processors due to the virtualization with Hyper Threading. I see a problem...any takers?

March 18th, 2004, 8:03 am

[root@fx www]# cat /etc/issue
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 3 (Taroon)

[root@fx www]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) XEON(TM) CPU 2.20GHz
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 2196.324
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 1
runqueue : 0
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : 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 ht tm
bogomips : 4377.80

processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) XEON(TM) CPU 2.20GHz
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 2196.324
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 3
siblings : 1
runqueue : 1
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : 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 ht tm
bogomips : 4390.91

March 18th, 2004, 8:04 am

flags : 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 ht tm

If we take a look at the hardware flags on these chips, there is 'ht' for hyper threading.
I specualate that it could be a limitation of software or firmware on some level...

March 23rd, 2004, 4:39 pm

well, have you compiled in Hyper Threading support ?

I am not too sure if it is native on stock installs.

May 9th, 2004, 7:27 am

Just wanted to let you guys know that the problem was eventually solved.
It was an indiscript setting, that was disabled, in the bios.

May 9th, 2004, 8:30 am

yikes, that took a long time to figure out? I am sorry, I truly feel for you. I would have been so mad I probably would have took the computer on a little trip to the freeway

May 20th, 2004, 5:02 pm

Patience...