Dual Core Processor and Suse 10.1

[vwgtiturbo]

I just have a question concerning dual core processors... I ordered a Socket 939 X2 4400 yesterday, to put in the place of my current 939 64-3800 and was wondering... Am I going to need to use an smp kernel for the dual core processor? Thanks in advance!

[Compunuts]

May be I'm wrong but I thought all Linux kernels are SMP enabled by default? There are some articles this month on LJ (Linux Journal) about Ultimate Linux boxes and never saw anything being specifically needing to use SMP kernels. I will check to make sure (I don't know where I put that mag) if what I said was not accurate.

[trickster]

I think you need an smp kernel.

[redhead]

May be I'm wrong but I thought all Linux kernels are SMP enabled by default?

Every vanilla kernel I've tried haven't had SMP enabled, so unless SUSE has tampered with that, there needs to be a SMP enabled kernel installed in order to fully use the dual cores.

[Compunuts]

Well, I don't know that much about SuSE so thanks for the clarification. Well, I guess all distros are the same since you need to run SMP version of kernels.

[BobRobertson]

I just have a question concerning dual core processors... I ordered a Socket 939 X2 4400 yesterday, to put in the place of my current 939 64-3800 and was wondering... Am I going to need to use an smp kernel for the dual core processor? Thanks in advance!

The easy answer is Yes. While I have no experience with the binary kernels shipped with SuSE, Debian has both single and SMP kernels available along side the standard single-CPU version.

KNOPPIX, for instance, has SMP enabled in the booting kernel "just in case" you're booting it on a multi CPU or multi-core system. So maybe SuSE does, but most likely not.

[vwgtiturbo]

Darn... that is what I figured. Now, I need to find a painless way to incorporate a new kernel. I never (out of about 4 or 5 tries) have gotten a custom compiled kernel to work. If I didn't have so much configuration on this system (outside of my home dir), I would have to seriously consider reinstalling and letting the system figure it out on it's own. Granted, I wouldn't learn anything by doing that, but then again, I haven't really learned much in my failed attempts either...

[Compunuts]

May be YaST has something similar to this but in APT all you need was choosing the specific kernel and installing it via apt-get install <your-kernel-version> .

[vwgtiturbo]

Okay, so I simply removed the Athlon64 proc and installed the Athlon64 X2. I can go into the 'My computer' icon on the desktop (or sysinfo:/) and see that, although it isn't working ideally, the processor is throttling sometimes (even though it really takes a lot to get it going). I was wondering... In sysinfo:/, it shows that my X2 is identified correctly, but how can I tell if the system actually sees/is using both cores? I downloaded the new driver from AMD, but it says I am going to need to recompile the kernel (which sounds about as much fun as jabbing a rusty icepick into my ear canal, as I have never successfully complete a kernel recompile), so I am not looking forward to that...

[redhead]

you could try with top, to see if it will report it as two processors, once it's started press "1" and it will show your CPU usage for each processor ie:

top - 19:03:59 up 1:27, 3 users, load average: 0.11, 0.10, 0.08
Tasks: 73 total, 1 running, 72 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu0 : 5.6% us, 2.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 92.1% id, 0.0% wa, 0.3% hi, 0.0% si
Cpu1 : 3.3% us, 0.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 96.7% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 2076820k total, 229604k used, 1847216k free, 10088k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 111496k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND