Asset ID:	1-71-1012638.1
Update Date:	2012-07-30
Keywords:

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Solution Type  Technical Instruction Sure

Solution  1012638.1 :   Sun Fire[TM] 12K/15K/E20K/E25K, Sun Fire V1280/4800/6800/E2900/E4900/E6900, Netra 1280/1290 servers: UltraSPARC IV+ DR restrictions on Solaris9 Update8  


PreviouslyPublishedAs
217387

Applies to:

Sun Fire 4800 Server
Sun Fire 6800 Server
Sun Fire E4900 Server
Sun Fire E6900 Server
Sun Fire 12K Server
All Platforms

Goal

With the introduction of UltraSPARC(R) IV+ 1.5/1.8/1.95Ghz processor based system boards:

Sun Fire[TM] 12K/15K/E20K/E25K platforms will require SMS 1.6 with patches. For details please see Sun Fire[TM] 12K/15K/E20K/E25K: Solaris[TM] and SMS requirements and recommendations (Doc ID 1009212.1)

Midrange Sun Fire V1280/4800/6800/E2900/E4900/E6900, Netra 1280/1290 platforms will require the ScApp firmware version 5.19 to facilitate support for the 1.5Ghz board, 5.20.1 for the 1.8Ghz and 5.20.4 for the 1.95GHz version. Please see for details.

All domain configurations resident on the above platforms employing UltraSPARC(R) IV+ processor based system boards will require Solaris[TM] 10 HW1 or Solaris[TM] 9 Update 8 operating system as their minimum Solaris releases.

For Solaris 10 please see "Sun Fire[TM] 12K/15K/E20K/E25K, Sun Fire V1280/4800/6800/E2900/E4900/E6900, Netra 1280/1290 servers: UltraSPARC IV+ DR restrictions on Solaris10 HW1" (Doc ID 1009465.1)

Solution

This technical instruction discusses a restriction introduced to Dynamic Reconfiguration ( DR ) for USIV+ based system boards on Sun Fire[TM] 12K/15K/E20K/E25K, Sun Fire V1280/4800/6800/E2900/E4900/E6900, or Netra 1280/1290 platforms running Solaris9 Update8.


The current Solaris version can be checked in /etc/release:

                        Solaris 9 9/05 s9s_u8wos_05 SPARC
           Copyright 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                            Assembled 04 August 2005

As a result of this DR restriction, any existing domain environments running USIII+ or USIV based system boards with less than ( or equal ) to 1 GBytes of memory size resident, will not be able to DR attach a USIV+ based system board to the domain.

An example of the DR sequence depicting the above restriction : i.e., a Solaris9 Update8 domain running off 1024 MB of memory as follows --

/etc/release reports :
                        Solaris 9 9/05 s9s_u8wos_05 SPARC
           Copyright 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                            Assembled 04 August 2005

prtdiag -v reports :

System Configuration:  Sun Microsystems  sun4u Sun Fire 6800
System clock frequency: 150 MHz
Memory size: 1024 Megabytes

Any attempts from the above domain environment to DR attach a USIV+ based system board will fail as follows --

# cfgadm
Ap_Id                          Type         Receptacle   Occupant     Condition
N0.IB9                         PCI_I/O_Boa  connected    configured   ok
N0.SB0                         CPU_V3       connected    configured   ok
N0.SB3                         CPU_V3       disconnected unconfigured unknown

# cfgadm -v -c configure N0.SB3
assign N0.SB3
assign N0.SB3 done
poweron N0.SB3
poweron N0.SB3 done
test N0.SB3
{/N0/SB3/P0/C0} Running CPU POR and Set Clocks
{/N0/SB3/P1/C0} Running CPU POR and Set Clocks
{/N0/SB3/P0/C0} @(#) lpost      5.19.2  2005/09/16 12:01
                   :
{/N0/SB3/P0} Passed
{/N0/SB3/P1} Passed
{/N0/SB3/P2} Passed
{/N0/SB3/P3} Passed
test N0.SB3 done
connect N0.SB3
Oct 17 09:52:00 v4u-6900a-domc sbdp: WARNING: Domain shutdown is required to add an UltraSPARC-IV+ board into a domain with <= 1GB of memory
cfgadm: Hardware specific failure: connect N0.SB3: Operation not supported

The above DR restriction stems from a Solaris9 specific optimization. This optimization implements a kernel thats instructed to use the USIII+ / USIV based Translation Storage Buffer (TSB) Extension Registers (TSBx) as a means for streamlining TLB misses, when it detects 1024MB ( or a lesser amount ) of memory present. When it detects more than 1024MB of memory resident, the kernel will not use the TSBx registers as a means for optimization.

The primary purpose of the TSB Extension Registers (TSBx) is to provide information for the hardware formation of TSB pointers and tag target, to assist software in handling TLB misses quickly.

However, given that the USIV+ CPU encloses a different Memory Management Unit (MMU) implementation -- where it maintains 2 separate TSBx registers (the DMMU TSBx registers & the IMMU TSBx registers), it would mean that DR attaching a USIV+ based system board to a Solaris9 Update8 environment will only be possible if there's more than 1024MB of memory resident.








Product
Sun Fire 12K Server
Sun Fire 15K Server
Sun Fire E20K Server
Sun Fire E25K Server
Sun Fire E6900 Server
Sun Fire 6800 Server
Sun Fire 4800 Server
Sun Fire E4900 Server
Sun Fire V1280 Server
Sun Fire E2900 Server
Netra 1280 Server
Sun Netra 1290 Server


Please see http://monaco.sfbay/detail.jsf?cr=4298790 for background information on the implementation.
Please be aware of < Document: 1011109.1 > Sun Fire[TM] 12k/15k/E20/E25k: Using DR during upgrade to USIV+ (Panther) Uniboards could panic domain

usiv+, dr, cfgadm, s10, s9u8, 1gb, memory, sbdp, UltraSPARC-IV+, TSB, TSBx, TLM miss



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