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Re: doubts about compile options



Am Montag, 17. Juni 2002 17:05 schrieb Marcelo Chiapparini:
> to know if the following two options should to be compiled in the kernel
> (directly or as a module) in the Pentium Pro and Athlon machines:
>
> CONFIG_X86_MSR
> CONFIG_X86_CPUID

Hi,
MSR are Model Specific Registers introduced by Intel with the Pentium 
processor family. I don't know if the AMD processors support this. These MSR 
give the system access to TLB (Translation Look-aside Buffers), BTB (Branch 
Target Buffer) control commands and some performance monitoring registers 
like the time stamp counter. The CONFIG_X86_MSR option enables support for a 
device to access them.
  The availability may vary from stepping to stepping. With the CPUID 
instruction you can find out some informations about the processor and it's 
features including the MSR. As I heard some time ago with it you can read the 
processor specific ID on P-III machines.

If you never heard of this staff you won't need it and can leave it out. May 
be some (very) processor specific performance monitoring tools or  benchmarks 
would like to have access to these devices. I never needed it cause xosview 
and top don't use them :)

Happy compiling...

  


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