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Pentium D CPUs and SMP support



Hi,

today I booted Knoppix LiveCD 4.0 (based on Debian, with kernel 2.6.11) on
an Sony PC with an ATI grachics chip to see how the X-server identified and
configured itself for the ATI (with no really clear answer, but it did not
seem to use an "ati" driver), but then I thought I would check if the kernel
was loaded with SMP since the CPU was a Pentium D 820.  KDE's Kinfo clearly
showed there being 2 CPUs - CPU 0 and CPU 1, but there was nothing actually
showing a kernel with SMP support was running.

What I'm wondering is:

1) Are the new (dual core) Pentium D and AMD x2 CPUs handled differently in
terms of SMP than the tranditional 2 CPU (SMP) setups we've had upto now?

2) I know the kernels anyway need to be compiled with SMP support, so maybe
the Knoppix LiveCD is (does anybody know for sure?), but I know that my 2
CPU (Pentium 3) system with Debian 3.1 shows that it is a kernel with SMP
support and also needs an IRQ balancer for example, which I did not see on
this Pentium D system.

3) Is it that the new dual core CPUs being on one chip/socket are handled
different and do not need an IRQ balancer?

Thanks for any and all explanations!
Robert



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