Can someone explain this?
8 Apr 2007 15:19:55 UTC
Topic 192576
(moderation:
Hi all and Happy Easter,
Upon restarting the Boinc manager I noticed the line in the read out;
"Sun 08 Apr 2007 08:07:44 AM PDT||Starting BOINC client version 5.8.15 for i686-pc-linux-gnu
Sun 08 Apr 2007 08:07:44 AM PDT||log flags: task, file_xfer, sched_ops
Sun 08 Apr 2007 08:07:44 AM PDT||Libraries: libcurl/7.16.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8d zlib/1.2.3
Sun 08 Apr 2007 08:07:44 AM PDT||Data directory: /home/gr/BOINC
Sun 08 Apr 2007 08:07:45 AM PDT||Processor: 2 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz [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 ht tm pbe constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl cid xtpr]
Sun 08 Apr 2007 08:07:45 AM PDT||Memory: 748.66 MB physical, 1.58 GB virtual
Sun 08 Apr 2007 08:07:45 AM PDT||Disk: 36.01 GB total, 27.28 GB free"
Now as you can see there is some system information. My concern is that to the best of my knowledge I downloaded Boinc for the i386 yet I see i686...does anyone have an explaination? I'm thinking that the i686 is the dual core boards.
Greg
Can someone explain this?
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Sorry, but I see nothing strange?
Michael
Team Linux Users Everywhere
Your Pentium4 is an i686
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Your Pentium4 is an i686 processor. See i686 designation.
Nothing to worry about. When
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Nothing to worry about. When I install Linux on my "Celeron M" (Banias) notebook it always identifies the CPU as a "686". So does BOINC, and when I bought the thing, Dual Cores were not even available ;-) My VServer, which runs on a single-core Xeon processor, also runs a 686 kernel, and when I downloaded a custom version of Debian, the developer had sth in the manual about "having chosen a 686 kernel to bring a bit more performance with the newer Pentium architectures".
RE: Now as you can see
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As Michael wrote, there's nothing weird in your logs.
First of all, what you see in the first line of your log is not what your system is supposed to be but what BOINC was compiled for.
As to the i686 part which seems to particularly frighten you: in the past, Intel used to name their processors in this sequence: 8088 (8 bit), 8086 (8 bit with some 16 bit extensions), 80186 (enhanced version of 8086 but never really took up), 80286 (16 bit), 80386 (32 bit) which with time caught name i386, i486. Then they produced next processor but rather than naming it i586 [*] they came up with Pentium. Then they produced another one, which was AFAIK first Intel that had multi-processor scalability already built-in, as well as on-dye L2 cache. They named it PentiumPro, but many knew it as i686. Then they produced Pentium II and Pentium III which were buch enhanced, but still by design, Pentium Pros. Hence name i686 remained a platform name for any modern Intel processors up to Core processors.
Of course there were Intel processors before 8088, but it's 8088 which started era of PCs. Which is basically same design as Zilog's Z80 which powered many home computers in early 80's, such as Sinclair Spectrum.
[*] The anecdote was that they were using every new processor to calculate the name of itself from the name of previous one: 386 = 286 + 100, 486 = 386 + 100.
Then the new processor came up with 486 + 100 = 585.99, which made Intel's marketing staff to invent Pentium. The inaccuracy is attributed to an early bug in Intel processor which was actually quite easy to exploit using say Microsoft Excell.
[edit] As to why platforms in Linux still have this i686 in their names... Linux was first done for 80386 or i386, which had all the memory management stuff built in it. Then came i486, which generally had FPU built in and lots of other optimizations. So when one compiled Linux kernel for i486 and that one wouldnt boot on i386, they came up with platform names. Same was true for user-land programmes. Then came Pentium with platform name i586 and PentiumPro with name i686. Later processors were not that different from basic usability point of view to get their own platform name. Additionaly, too many platforms would make life of distribution developers really hard. Of course, you can still use specialized programmes (such as BOINC) that make use of advanced CPU capabilities available in modern CPUs, such as SSE (any version).
One really new platform name is x86-64 which corresponds to 64-bit capable Intel and AMD processors.
[/edit]
Metod ...
Cool :-) I didn't know most
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Cool :-) I didn't know most of that (just had the practical experience that 686 seems to work well for modern Intels). Thanks for the informative post.
I have a copy of Intel 8080
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I have a copy of Intel 8080 Microcomputer Systems User's Manual, September 1975
A list of its possible applications includes Intelligent Teminals, Gaming Machines, Cash Registers, Accounting and Billing Machines, Telephone Switching Control, Numerical Controlled Machines, Process Control. No computers. At that time, the idea that you could use a microprocessor to build a computer seemed heretical.
Tullio
RE: Cool :-) I didn't know
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Thank you all...just didn't understand if allowing the Intel chip to run in Hyper Threading caused Boinc to miss read the instillation. I have only one cpu here but my profile shows 2.
Greg
I think it always lists 2
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I think it always lists 2 when you have HT... can't say for sure, though, my single cores are all without HT.
I heard that Intel decided
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I heard that Intel decided not to name the first Pentium chip "586" because they couldn't trademark a number. Is this just some old wives tale?
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman
No that's true. They fought
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No that's true. They fought and lost to AMMD in the courts over the 486 moniker.