fit-pc2 z510 with two thread support

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vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

fit-pc2 z510 with two thread support

Post by vtailor »

I think that the M2 bios for the fit-pc2 was written for 2G memory machines, and it implicitly sets the z5xx cpu up for hyperthreading. Hyperthreading is extremely useful, and I am writing this from a non-Compulab z510 with hyperthreading enabled (see below). My experience using a two-thread z510 is that it does streaming video much better than does the Compulab z510, which is not set up for two-thread hyperthreads. If there is some way to install the M2 bios on the fit-pc2 z510, assuming it sets up the cpu for hyperthreading as below, I'd be willing to volunteer to do it as an experiment. For one thing, the peacekeeper benchmark on RIP goes up from 370 on the Compulab to 420 on this machine. And, full-screen flash video loses the frame-by-frame effect on the Compulab z510 and goes to nearly continuous with lip synchronization. Please contact me at my personal email address.

This is what the lshw program shows for the z510 system that I am writing this from:
*-cpu
description: CPU
product: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU Z510 @ 1.10GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 4
bus info: cpu@0
version: 6.12.2
serial: 0001-06C2-0000-0000-0000-0000
slot: CPU 1
size: 1100MHz
capacity: 1100MHz
width: 32 bits
clock: 100MHz
capabilities: boot fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority cpufreq
configuration: cores=1 enabledcores=1 id=0 threads=2
*-cache:0
description: L1 cache
physical id: 5
slot: L1-Cache
size: 24KiB
capacity: 24KiB
capabilities: internal write-back data
*-cache:1
description: L2 cache
physical id: 6
slot: L2-Cache
size: 512KiB
capacity: 512KiB
capabilities: internal write-back unified
*-logicalcpu:0
description: Logical CPU
physical id: 0.1
width: 32 bits
capabilities: logical
*-logicalcpu:1
description: Logical CPU
physical id: 0.2
width: 32 bits
capabilities: logical

vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Re: fit-pc2 z510 with two thread support

Post by vtailor »

No need to contact me. I got the latest fit-pc2 1G and 2G bios and put the 2G bios onto the base fit-pc2 z510. It works, but it tells everyone I have 2G of memory, when my system only comes with 1G, and no special hyperthreading. So, I put the 1G bios back onto the system.

At the moment, my Phoenix bios is set to provide "hyperthreads" which do not show up as "real" hyperthreads, even when I set the grub kernel command line at 'maxcpus=2'.

So, I am tempted to find an AMI bios and see if I can install it. AMI recognizes variable amounts of DDR2 memory and allows the user to set graphis memory to 8M, rather than the 128M of the Phoenix bios, probably not a good idea for anything except Linux, but then the AMI bios does not install on any desktop Windows, period.

vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Re: fit-pc2 z510 with two thread support

Post by vtailor »

Somewhere in the source code of the fit-pc2 bios, there is the code for "Enable Hyperthreads". The code checks for the z510 and enables one kind of hyperthreading, and enables dual hyperthreads for the remaining z5xx CPUs. At the Time the Phoenix bios was adapted to the fit-pc2, it was apparently thought that is the best arrangement. I am here to tell you that treating all the z5xx CPUs uniformly works much, much better.

I installed Linux Mint Maya on my two hyperthread machine, and it installs with the psb-gfx kernel module and the fbdev_drv graphics driver that I have been advocating. That version of Mint really acts accelerated doing streaming flash video. You would see the change immediately if you experimented with a changed bios of your own for the fit-pc2 and ran basic Mint without the powervr cludge. The two hyperthread arrangement keeps the z510 from saturating on one thread and slowing down.

The basic problem is to change a few lines of source code, assemble the Phoenix bios, and install the new .ROM. The change would simplify the ROM code and would be a few bytes smaller. Compulab could even charge a nominal fee to download the code to interested hobbyists and Nokia software employees hoping to speed up cellphone Windows 8.

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