I purchased a Biostar Viotech 3100+ as a low energy use mobo and noticed that the single core cpu is supposed to support the X86_64 instruction set.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Nano
None of the 64 bit, opensource OS's I have tried (Slackware 13.1, OpenBSD 4.9current, Arch Linux, NetBSD5,1 or Debian 6.0) are bootable and some (Slackware and Arch) return a message that the cpu is an i686.
The CMPXCHG8B instruction set is enabled in the bios.
I googled linux and openbsd in regard to the problem and searched the linux kernel bugzilla without any mention of 64 bit processing on this cpu.
I'm guessing it is either buggy and ignored or the issue has not been brought to the attention of the appropriate kernel coders.
Anyone have any insight into this? I'd like to report it as a bug but it looks like it would take the better part of the day to register at the various bugzilla's and mailing lists only to have someone tell me it is buggy.
Added: The advertising is somewhat misleading, the cpu lacks the lm flag
ls /proc/cpuinfoprocessor : 0
Quote:
vendor_id : CentaurHauls
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : VIA C7-D Processor 1800MHz
stepping : 0
cpu MHz : 1596.238
cache size : 128 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge cmov pat clflush acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm nx up pni est tm2 xtpr rng rng_en ace ace_en ace2 ace2_en phe phe_en pmm pmm_en
bogomips : 3193.49
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:
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I'm not overly disappointed as I did not buy it as a x86_64 board. I was suprised by an Intel Atom 330 board that was x86_64 and dual core to boot and would recommend the Atom boards over the Via C7-D+ boards as a low power solution.
