Re: PAE and i386 kernel

[brook%biology.nmsu.edu@localhost (Brook Milligan)]

Matthias Scheler writes:
 > Out of interest:
 > What do you hope to get from NetBSD/i386 PAE in comparison to NetBSD/amd64?

I have some older machines that will handle more than 4Gb memory but
from what I understand the CPUs will not run amd64 (missing EM64T
support; see below).  Am I understanding the requirements for amd64
correctly?

I would like to accomplish two things with different subsets of these
servers:

- Add more memory and then run Xen on some to provide a bunch of
  services on different domUs.  I am assuming that the dom0 needs to
  work with the entire range of memory, though; that may be incorrect.
  Is it possible for Xen to use the entire memory when any individual
  machine, both dom0 and any domU, can only access 4Gb of memory?

- Add more memory to support some large calculations that require lots
  of RAM.

Suggestions on how to accomplish these goals are welcome.

Here are the CPU features for these machines as probed by NetBSD/i386
v4.0:

     cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
     cpu0: Intel Xeon (686-class), 2400.17 MHz, id 0xf27
     cpu0: features bfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR>
     cpu0: features bfebfbff<PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX>
     cpu0: features bfebfbff<FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,SBF>
     cpu0: features2 400<CID>
     cpu0: "Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz"
     cpu0: I-cache 12K uOp cache 8-way, D-cache 8 KB 64B/line 4-way
     cpu0: L2 cache 512 KB 64B/line 8-way
     cpu0: ITLB 4K/4M: 128 entries
     cpu0: DTLB 4K/4M: 64 entries
     cpu0: using thermal monitor 1
     cpu0: calibrating local timer
     cpu0: apic clock running at 133 MHz
     cpu0: 16 page colors

Thanks alot for your help.

Cheers,
Brook