Hello, I recently attempted to upgrade a server from Dual Opteron 244's to Dual Opteron 270's Dual-Core. When I first put them in and booted the bios did not recognize the CPU's. I flashed the bios to the latest rev. which has support for dual-core CPU's. The bios then recognized them and found 4 CPU's. Suse booted and there were a number of errors in dmesg. The machine was not functioning correctly and it froze as soon as it had a load on it. /proc/cpuinfo had CPU's 0-3 however in top the percentage of CPU usage was only adding up to what it was before with the 2 single-core CPU's.

I have called SuSe tech support as well as MSI. SuSe tech support told me that they cannot support this or give me any info on it. They do not have a test server with dual-core opterons, and recomended that I post on this forum.

Does the 2.6.11 kernel support Dual-Core Opteron CPU's? furthermore, does it work when there are 2 of them present?
if not,
Is there a kernel/patch that has been released that has support for these CPU's?

What configuration may I need to tweak to get it working?

Is there some sort of configuration for the CPU's in my bios that would resolve the issue's that the kernel is having?

Systems Spec's:
MSI K8D Master3-133-FA4R rev. 2.70
2 Opteron 270's Dual-Core
24 GB ECC DDR400
3Ware SATA Raid5 12X80GB WD Raptor
Suse 9.3
2.6.11.4-21.12-smp #1 SMP Wed May 10 09:38:20 UTC 2006 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

It appears that there are 2 problems here.. one is with powernow-K8 and the other with the CPU frequencies. Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated. This is a production server who's CPU's are maxed out and needs to be upgraded asap. Thank you in advance..


Applicable entries in /var/log/messages:
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: Found 4 AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron processors (version 1.00.09e)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0xc (2000 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0x2 (1000 MHz), vid 0x12 (1100 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: cpu_init done, current fid 0xc, vid 0x8
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0xc (2000 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0x2 (1000 MHz), vid 0x12 (1100 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: cpu_init done, current fid 0xc, vid 0x8
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0xc (2000 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0x2 (1000 MHz), vid 0x12 (1100 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: cpu_init done, current fid 0xc, vid 0x8
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0xc (2000 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0x2 (1000 MHz), vid 0x12 (1100 mV)
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa kernel: cpu_init done, current fid 0xc, vid 0x8
Jun 6 16:23:33 hammertapa rcpowersaved: enter 'powernow_k8' into POWERSAVE_CPUFREQD_MODULE in /etc/sysconfig/powersave/cpufreq.
Jun 6 16:23:34 hammertapa kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core v2.0
Jun 6 16:23:35 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xa 0x2, vid 0x8 0x12
Jun 6 16:23:35 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xa 0x2, vid 0x8 0x12
Jun 6 16:23:35 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency is 1000000, cpufreq assumed 2000000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:23:36 hammertapa kernel: Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Jun 6 16:23:36 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency out of sync: cpufreq and timing core thinks of 2000000, is 1000000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:23:36 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency out of sync: cpufreq and timing core thinks of 1000000, is 1800000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:23:36 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xa 0x2, vid 0x8 0x12

Jun 6 18:46:09 hammertapa rcpowersaved: CPU frequency scaling is not supported by your processor.
Jun 6 18:46:09 hammertapa rcpowersaved: enter 'POWERSAVE_CPUFREQD_MODULE=off' in /etc/sysconfig/powersave/cpufreq to avoid this warning.

Jun 6 16:18:16 hammertapa kernel: cpu_init done, current fid 0xc, vid 0x8
Jun 6 16:18:16 hammertapa rcpowersaved: enter 'powernow_k8' into POWERSAVE_CPUFREQD_MODULE in /etc/sysconfig/powersave/cpufreq.

Jun 6 16:51:54 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency out of sync: cpufreq and timing core thinks of 1000000, is 1800000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:51:54 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xa 0x2, vid 0x8 0x12
Jun 6 16:51:54 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency is 1000000, cpufreq assumed 1800000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:52:16 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0x2 0xa, vid 0x12 0x8
Jun 6 16:52:16 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency is 1800000, cpufreq assumed 1000000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:52:16 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xa 0xc, vid 0x8 0x8
Jun 6 16:52:16 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency is 2000000, cpufreq assumed 1800000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:52:16 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xc 0x2, vid 0x8 0x12
Jun 6 16:52:16 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency is 1000000, cpufreq assumed 2000000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:52:24 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0x2 0xc, vid 0x12 0x8
Jun 6 16:52:24 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency is 2000000, cpufreq assumed 1000000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:52:24 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xc 0xa, vid 0x8 0x8
Jun 6 16:52:24 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xa 0xc, vid 0x8 0x8
Jun 6 16:52:25 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0xc 0x2, vid 0x8 0x12
Jun 6 16:52:25 hammertapa kernel: Warning: CPU frequency is 1000000, cpufreq assumed 2000000 kHz.
Jun 6 16:52:54 hammertapa kernel: powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fid 0x2 0xa, vid 0x12 0x8

Compile the kernel with out cpufreq or set it as a module. If you do not want to do this, I think there is kernel option you can pass at the boot loader to turn off cpufreq. Multi-processor systems have to have all CPU sync together. You could use multiple computers that have one processor in each and then set them up in a cluster. A cluster does not care if one node (computer) is slower than the rest.

Thanks for the tip. The kernel option acpi=off seems to cure it. Add this to the list of kernel parameters in /boot/grub/menu.lst