On Mon May 13, 2013 06:35:53 PM Kyle Brantley wrote: > On 5/13/2013 1:14 PM, Conrad Kostecki wrote: > > Am 13.05.2013 15:46, schrieb Stuart Henderson: > >> On 2013-05-10, Conrad Kostecki <conik...@gmx.de> wrote: > >>> Am 10.05.2013 16:14, schrieb fabrice bessettes: > >>>> Hi list, > >>>> > >>>> [...] > >>>> > >>>> But I was wondering if the Soekris CPU E6xx is really a 64 bit CPU > >>>> ? or > >>>> if the openBSD kernel amd64 includes 32-bit in it. In this case, I > >>>> might > >>>> reinstall my system. > >> > >> OpenBSD/amd64 only runs in 64-bit mode. > >> > >>> Seems so. Ubuntu and Gentoo work perfectly fine with a 64-Bit kernel > >>> out > >>> of the box. Without any patching. So the CPU seems to be 64-Bit > >>> capable.. I don't know, why Intel says, that this is not possible. > >>> > >>> Cheers, > >>> Conrad > >> > >> The CPU is supposed to only support 32-bit mode but it appears that the > >> 6501 bios may not set this up correctly. > > > > I don't understand. How can a 32-Bit CPU work in 64-Bit Mode? I can't > > image, that the BIOS makes the difference. Linux shows the flags lm, > > which indicated, that it supports "AMD64/EM64T"? > > The CPU was produced as a 64-bit chip, but for reasons X or Y or Z, the > manufacturer is only going to support 32-bit. Maybe there are bugs with > respect to 64-bit, maybe it's a marketing thing. In the end, they market > the chips as 32-bit, nicely omitting any mention of 64-bit support, and > then ship the chips with notes to the people using them saying "we > support: 32-bit." The person using the chip (Soren in this case) is the > one obligated to only expose the 32-bit aspects of the chip. > > In short, as per Intel, using the 6501 in a 64-bit mode is unsupported. > With that said, I've been running my 6501s in 64-bit mode exclusively, > ever since I got one (two weeks after release?). I've not had any > problems with them, but then again, I may not be using them in a way > that triggers issues, should there be any.
I think its up to intel to disable 64bit support if they really don't want it running in 64bit mode. like with other features it sells. Could be as simple as changing what the cpuid instruction returns. Or burning a trace somewhere that keeps the instruction decoder from decoding 64bit instructions. > > Cheers, > > Conrad > > _______________________________________________ > > Soekris-tech mailing list > > Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com > > http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech > > --Kyle > _______________________________________________ > Soekris-tech mailing list > Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com > http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech -- Thomas Fjellstrom tho...@fjellstrom.ca _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
