Re: MCE Rollup 2 Dual Processor support

That's not quite it. The AMD issue is/was that once you enable Cool&Quite
CPU speed throttling, the CPU cores seem to be throttled independently
which seems to result in their high-precision timers delivering different
values. As a result, when a thread is switched from one core to the other,
it would get different timer values. In the particular case of MCE, the
MPEG-2 Demultiplexer filter stumbled over that and malfunctioned, leading
to corrupted recordings. That issue is fixed by the "/usepmtimer" in
BOOT.INI which forces Windows to use the not-so-high precision ACPI Power
Management timer which delivers consistent values.

As to code which will not work right in a multiple CPU system, that does
not have to be deliberately written. While typical Windows applications are
multithreaded already, two threads will only actually run parallel on a
multi-CPU system, and that can lead to different results when there are
bugs in the code. Especially when data modifications are protected by a
lock to keep changes in sync, and the lock is not consistently obtained,
you can get "race" conditions and deadlocks on a multiprocessor system
which do not occur on a single CPU system. Incidentally, the MCE 2005
EPG/services database code still contains such a bug...

Regards,«
--
Robert Schlabbach
e-mail: robert_s@xxxxxxx
Berlin, Germany

"JW" <nospam@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:uzEDs1i3FHA.3000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> MCE worked with dual processors in MCE 2004 and MCE does not know if the
> there are two separate CPUs, a HT CPU or a Dual Core CPU. MCE 2005 RU1 had
> no problems with an INTEL Dual Core system only with the AMD dual core
> system and the problem was fixed when AMD gfixed a bug in their dual core
> driver for XP. A programmer has to deliberately write code that will not
> work in a multiple CPU system.
>
> "Quaoar" <quaoar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:OgGvAdi3FHA.3296@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > JW wrote:
> >> Dual processor support was actually included MCE 2005. H
owever, there
> >> was a problem with the origional AMD dual core processor driver for
> >> XP that caused problem in rollup1. apparently RU2 included the
> >> latest AMD dual core driver(May 2005) for XP that is also available
> >> at the AMD Website.
> >> "Quaoar" <quaoar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >> news:eFycRfX3FHA.2640@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >>> I recently saw a post here about dual processor support. It was
> >>> stated that dual processor 'optimization' would be provided in a
> >>> future update. Is dual processor support included in Rollup 2?
> >>>
> >>> Q
> >
> > Thanks for confirming what I thought was the case. OTOH, I've yet to
find
> > a definitive statement about dual core capability - "compatible" is as
> > close as I've come to verification that MCE is threaded for dual-core.
> >
> > Q
> >
>
>

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: MCE Rollup 2 Dual Processor support
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