SMP Madness

[mikebw at colossus.bilow.com (Mike Bilow)]

I think there are two likely suspects: IRQ mishandling and the frame
buffer driver.  First, make sure that any IRQs capable of set to
level-trigger are so set, especially those (such as for the network card)
which are being remapped through IO-APIC.  Second, see what happens if you
recompile without frame buffer support; this may reduce you to SVGA on
your hardware, but it is a reasonable test.

-- Mike


On 2000-06-05 at 00:49 -0400, Brian J. Conway wrote:

> The kinda behavior I'm getting is randomly having a CPU run at 100% for
> a period of time while doing something heavily threaded (like xmms) or
> just completely randomly, then settle down and have both CPUs running at
> 50% while just playing an mp3.  This is, of course, ridiculous, because
> when I use a kernel with just one CPU (as well as in Windows, sorry)
> everything is just fine, and mp3s take a whopping 3% CPU to play.  Also,
> while playing Q3 or Unreal Tournament in an SMP kernel, both processors
> are running and supposedly using half the load each, even without having
> SMP enabled in the program (as neither support it, and only one
> processor should be doing the work), and my mouse freezes periodically
> for a second every 5 seconds or so when both processors max out while
> playing.


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