Thursday, December 22, 2011

FreeBSD - CPU code in dmesg meanings

Another Method:
# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/sysinfo ; make install clean distclean ; rehash
===> The following configuration options are available for sysinfo-1.0.1:
DMIDECODE=on "Include information from the dmidecode tool"
PORTAUDIT=on "Include information from the portaudit tool"
===> Use 'make config' to modify these settings

# dmidecode -t processor | less

http://gala4th.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-to-get-detail-hardware-information.html

Objective :

What are those CPU features flags means in "dmesg", e.g.

# less -S /var/run/dmesg.boot

Features=0xfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,
PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS>
Features2=0x82982203<SSE3,PCLMULQDQ,SSSE3,CX16,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,POPCNT,
AESNI,<b31>>
AMD Features=0x28100000<NX,RDTSCP,LM>
AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>

Flags meanings :
FLAG
-------------------
MEANINGS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3DNOW
A multimedia extension created by AMD for its processors, based on / almost equivalent to Intel’s MMX extensions
3DNOWEXT
3DNOW Extended. Also known as AMD’s 3DNow!Enhanced 3DNow!Extensions
APIC
Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller
CLFSH/CLFlush
Cache Line Flush
CMOV
Conditional Move/Compare Instruction
CMP_Legacy
Register showing the CPU is not Hyper-Threading capable
Constant_TSC
on Intel P-4s, the TSC runs with constant frequency independent of cpu frequency when EST is used
CR8Legacy
-unknown-
CX8
CMPXCHG8B Instruction. (Compare and exchange 8 bytes. Also known as F00F, which is an abbreviation of the hexadecimal encoding of an instruction that exhibits a design flaw in the majority of older Intel Pentium CPU).
CX16
CMPXCHG16B Instruction. (CMPXCHG16B allows for atomic operations on 128-bit double quadword (or oword) data types. This is useful for high resolution counters that could be updated by multiple processors (or cores). Without CMPXCHG16B the only way to perform such an operation is by using a critical section.)
DE
Debugging Extensions
DS
Debug Store
DS_CPL
CPL qualified Debug Store (whatever CPL might mean in this context)
DTS
Could mean Debug Trace Store or Digital Thermal Sensor, depending on source
EIST/EST
Enhanced Intel SpeedsTep
FXSR
FXSAVE/FXRSTOR. (The FXSAVE instruction writes the current state of the x87 FPU, MMX technology, Streaming SIMD Extensions, and Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 data, control, and status registers to the destination operand. The destination is a 512-byte memory location. FXRSTOR will restore the state saves).
FXSR_OPT
-unknown-
HT
Hyper-Transport. Note that the same abbreviation might is also used to indicate Hyper Threading (see below)
HTT/HT
Hyper-Threading. An Intel technology that allows quasi-parallel execution of different instructions on a single core. The single core is seen by applications as if it were two (or potentially more) cores. However, two true CPU cores are almost always faster than a single core with HyperThreading. This flag indicates support in the CPU when checking the flags in /proc/cpuinfo on Linux systems. For more info how you can detect active HyperThreading, see the first comment in my blog post about this page at [2]
HVM
Hardware support for virtual machines (Xen abbreviation for AMD SVM / Intel VMX)
LAHF_LM
Load Flags into AH Register, Long Mode.
LM
Long Mode. (64bit Extensions, AMD’s AMD64 or Intel’s EM64T).
MCA
Machine Check Architecture
MCE
Machine Check Exception
MMX
It is rumoured to stand for MultiMedia eXtension or Multiple Math or Matrix Math eXtension, but officially it is a meaningless acronym trademarked by Intel
MMXEXT
MMX Extensions – an enhanced set of instructions compared to MMX
MON/MONITOR
CPU Monitor
MSR
RDMSR and WRMSR Support
MTRR
Memory Type Range Register
NX
No eXecute, a flag that can be set on memory pages to disable execution of code in these pages
PAE
Physical Address Extensions. PAE is the added ability of the IA32 processor to address more than 4 GB of physical memory using Intel’s 36bit page addresses instead of the standard 32bit page addresses to access a total of 64GB of RAM. Also supported by many AMD chips
PAT
Page Attribute Table
PBE
Pending Break Encoding
PGE
PTE Global Bit
PNI
Prescott New Instruction. This was the codename for SSE3 before it was released on the Intel Prescott processor (which was later added to the Pentium 4 family name).
PSE
Page Size Extensions. (See PSE36)
PSE36
Page Size Extensions 36. IA-32 supports two methods to access memory above 4 GB (32 bits), PSE and PAE. PSE is the older and far less used version. For more information, take a look at [1].
SEP
SYSENTER and SYSEXIT
SS
Self-Snoop
SSE
Streaming SIMD Extensions. Developed by Intel for its Pentium III but also implemented by AMD processors from Athlon XP onwards
SSE2
Streaming SIMD Extensions 2. (An additional 144 SIMDs.) Introduced by Intel Pentium 4, on AMD since Athlon 64
SSE3
Streaming SIMD Extensions 3. (An additional 13 instructions) introduced with “Prescott” revision Intel Pentium 4 processors. AMD introduced SSE3 with the Athlon 64 “Venice” revision
SSSE3
Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extension 3. (SSSE3 contains 16 new discrete instructions over SSE3.) Introduced on Intel Core 2 Duo processors. No AMD chip supports SSSE3 yet.
SSE4
Streaming SIMD Extentions 4. Future Intel SSE revision adding 50 new instructions which will debut on Intel’s upcoming “Nehalem” processor in 2008. Also known as “Nehalem New Instructions (NNI)”
SVM
Secure Virtual Machine. (AMD’s virtualization extensions to the 64-bit x86 architecture, equivalent to Intel’s VMX, both also known as HVM in the Xen hypervisor.)
TM
Thermal Monitor
TM2
Thermal Monitor 2
TSC
Time Stamp Counter
VME
Virtual-8086 Mode Enhancement
VMX
Intel’s equivalent to AMD’s SVM
XTPR
TPR register chipset update control messenger. Part of the APIC code

This table of flag meanings is taken shamelessly from Sven's blog

Extra note, if the processor list the capability of "LM", this means it support 64 bit processing. Which also means, it can take advantage of 64 bit processing by installing FreeBSD AMD64 achitecture.

Arrivederci !!!

Reference:
http://scratching.psybermonkey.net/2011/04/freebsd-cpu-code-in-dmesg-meanings.html#more

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