Sun Fire V480 compatibility question?

[Marius Strobl]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 07:21:26PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote:
> Hi guys and Marius, (sorry for the cc but you did bring up the topic so 
> I'm figuring that you probably know the most about this subject!)
> 
> I am just in the process of figuring out which Sun bridge I will need 
> for the Fire v480 server as a quote from Marius Strobl suggests this:
> 
> [quote]
> 
> FreeBSD currently crashes on older models of V480 when attempting
> to use an on-board NIC due to what appears to be a CPU bug which
> needs to be worked around. It appears to work fine on later V480
> equipped with version 7 Schizo bridges (that's just an indicator
> and unlikely related to the problem) though, but FreeBSD 7.3 will
> be the first release (besides the current stable branches) to work
> with their changed firmware behavior. Linux doesn't seem to do any
> better in this regard:
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-sparc&m=122220796209509&w=2
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2009/12/msg00012.html
> 
> Marius
> 
> [quote]
> 
> My supplier has given me an extract from the Sun handbook which doesn't 
> seem to show version 7:
> 
> 
>    A37
> 
> 501-5819    501-6733
> November 2001
> <=501-5819-12: SCHIZO 2.2
> >=501-5819-13: SCHIZO 2.5  August 2003
> reworked 501-5819-12
> SCHIZO 2.2
> only available from
> Sun Services
> 501-6780    501-6790
> December 2003
> FAB 270-5819-06
> SCHIZO 2.5  April 2004
> FAB 270-5819-07
> SCHIZO 2.5
> or ELE 1.1+
> 
> 
> A bit of Google'ing however got me to this:
> 
> [quote]
> Version /Schizo/ Rev /7/ 2.5 6 2.4 5 2.3 4 2.2. Symptoms. Should the 
> described issue occur, /Sun Fire/ 280R, /V480/, V880 and Netra 20 
> systems may encounter a FATAL *...
> *[/quote]
> 
> From here: 
> http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-66-200502-1
> 
> also this:
> 
> [quote]
> 
>     * FreeBSD has been adopted to the changed firmware of newer Sun Fire
>       V480 (those equipped with version 7 Schizo bridges) and has been
>       reported to now run fine on these. The necessary change will be
>       part of 7.3-RELEASE. Unfortunately, using the on-board NICs in
>       older models of Sun Fire V480 (at least those equipped with version
>       4 Schizo bridges) under FreeBSD still leads to the firmware issuing
>       a FATAL RESET due to what appears to be a CPU bug, which needs to
>       be worked around.
> 
> 
> [/quote]
> 
> Taken from the Sparc64 part of this page: 
> http://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers&m=126375029221240&w=2
> 
> What I can understand from all of this is that the version 7 is actually 
> a revision 7.... so any of the bus versions listed above in the table 
> will work as long as they are revision 7 or later?
> 
> Is this the case, have I understood correctly??
> 

It's the other way around, version 4 and 7 refer to the contents
of the "version#" property of these bridges in the Open Firmware
device tree, which can be translated into 2.x revision numbers for
exampled based on the table present in the Schizo Errata [1], i.e.
version 7 translates to revision 2.5 and version 4 translates to
revision 2.2. The sunsolve document you refer to actuall is in
line with this information.
I highly suspect this problem is related to the infamous BugID
4898531, just that Solaris can work around it to some extent or
that FreeBSD happens to better a triggering it (I actually have
a version of cas(4) which makes it less likely but still doesn't
work around it completely), so V480 equipped with 501-6780 and
501-6790 centerplanes should be fine while those with 501-5819
and 501-6733 are prone to fail.

Marius

1: http://www.sun.com/processors/manuals/External_Schizo_Errata.pdf