Chip power supply

[steveb]

I am a researcher and we have been doing detailed analysis of processor/package power consumption on a variety of IA32 processors under different workloads. The Z550 is an interesting point in the design space. The question is whether the fit-pc2 is suitable for our study. Three questions:

a) is there a separate power lead for the processor? I need to be able to place a current sensor on the power lead, or in some other way isolate and measure current going to the chip.

b) does the bios support clock scaling? We're interested in seeing how processor energy (power x execution time) varies as a function of clock speed, so under or overclocking is useful.

c) does the bios support turning off hyprethreading? We're also interested in measuring the power hit for SMT

Any help on the above would be gratefully received.

Cheers,

--Steve

[irads]

A. This is undocumented and involves quite a sensitive supply circuit. We cannot support installing the required resistor. You may have better luck with Intel evaluation board.
B. BIOS supports FSB overclocking for Z530 but not for Z550 due to lack of headroom.
C. Yes.

BTW, Z560 may be a more interesting research target than Z550.

[steveb]

That's very helpful. Thanks for the prompt response.