[CentOS] Tyan S2891 and CentOS

Thu Dec 1 21:16:52 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <thebs413 at earthlink.net>

"William A. Mahaffey III" <wam at HiWAAY.net> wrote:
> Since CentOS is based on stable/older code base, and Tyan
> S2891 is bleeding-edge-new, I wouldn't be surprised if it
> didn't work so well. My $0.02 ONLY, no 1st hand experience,
> YMMV, etc.

The CK04 (nForce4/Pro/etc...) series is not much different
than the earlier 02 (nForce2) and 03 (nForce3) series.  So
basically anything with kernel 2.4.23+ (including backports
made to RHEL3 many updates ago) or 2.6.5+ will have
_excellent_ support when it comes to I2C, HyperTransport-PCI
interconnect, peripherals, etc...  In fact, one could argue
the best periperal support in Linux "out-of-the-box" these
days is on the nForce2/3/4/Pro chipsets.

However, when you start looking at 2-3 on-board
HyperTransport tunnels, then you're talking a _lot_ of
bridging.  E.g., the S2895 has not only the nForce Pro 2200
(with 4 PCIe masters, HT-native GbE and 4 SATA channels, plus
the legacy PC), not only the nForce Pro 2050 (with 4 more
PCIe masters, another HT-native GbE and 4 more SATA chennls),
but also an AMD8131 (dual PCI-X 1.0 channels).  That's a
_lot_ of busses/peripherals to enumerate!

It's not the immaturity of the components -- it's the sheer
number!  They _all_ work just fine, because HyperTransport
makes it possible.  *BUT* automatic identification and
enumeration of them all is the issue.



-- 
Bryan J. Smith                | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     |  (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ |   missing headers)