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Chapter 3. Virtualization
145
Table 3-6 lists the support of specific programming features for various versions of Linux.
Table 3-6 Linux support for POWER7 features
See the following sources of information:
Advance Toolchain:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/hpccentral/How+to+use+T
ofor+Linux+on+POWER
Release notes:
–
ftp://linuxpatch.ncsa.uiuc.edu/toolchain/at/at05/suse/SLES_11/release_notes.a
t05-2.1-0.html
–
ftp://linuxpatch.ncsa.uiuc.edu/toolchain/at/at05/redhat/RHEL5/release_notes.a
t05-2.1-0.html
Features
Linux releases
Comments
SLES 10 SP4
SLES 11 SP2
RHEL 5.8
RHEL 6.3
POWER6
compatibility
mode
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
-
POWER7 mode
No
Yes
No
Yes
Take advantage of the
and POWER7
features.
Strong Access
Ordering
No
Yes
No
Yes
Can improve Lx86
performance.
Scale to 256 cores
and 1024 threads
No
Yes
No
Yes
Base OS support is available.
Four-way SMT
No
Yes
No
Yes
Better hardware usage.
VSX support
No
Yes
No
Yes
Full exploitation requires
Advance Toolchain.
Distro toolchain
mcpu/mtune=p7
No
Yes
No
Yes
SLES11/GA toolchain has
minimal POWER7 and
enablement
necessary to support kernel
build.
Advance
Toolchain support
Yes
a
a. Execution restricted to POWER6 instructions
Yes
Yes
a
Yes
Alternative GNU Toolchain
that explores the technologies
available on POWER
architecture.
64 KB base page
size
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Better memory utilization, and
smaller footprint.
Tickless idle
No
Yes
No
Yes
Improved energy utilization
and virtualization of partially to
fully idle partitions.