1Running Linux on the Voyager Architecture 2========================================= 3 4For full details and current project status, see 5 6http://www.hansenpartnership.com/voyager 7 8The voyager architecture was designed by NCR in the mid 80s to be a 9fully SMP capable RAS computing architecture built around intel's 486 10chip set. The voyager came in three levels of architectural 11sophistication: 3,4 and 5 --- 1 and 2 never made it out of prototype. 12The linux patches support only the Level 5 voyager architecture (any 13machine class 3435 and above). 14 15The Voyager Architecture 16------------------------ 17 18Voyager machines consist of a Baseboard with a 386 diagnostic 19processor, a Power Supply Interface (PSI) a Primary and possibly 20Secondary Microchannel bus and between 2 and 20 voyager slots. The 21voyager slots can be populated with memory and cpu cards (up to 4GB 22memory and from 1 486 to 32 Pentium Pro processors). Internally, the 23voyager has a dual arbitrated system bus and a configuration and test 24bus (CAT). The voyager bus speed is 40MHz. Therefore (since all 25voyager cards are dual ported for each system bus) the maximum 26transfer rate is 320Mb/s but only if you have your slot configuration 27tuned (only memory cards can communicate with both busses at once, CPU 28cards utilise them one at a time). 29 30Voyager SMP 31----------- 32 33Since voyager was the first intel based SMP system, it is slightly 34more primitive than the Intel IO-APIC approach to SMP. Voyager allows 35arbitrary interrupt routing (including processor affinity routing) of 36all 16 PC type interrupts. However it does this by using a modified 375259 master/slave chip set instead of an APIC bus. Additionally, 38voyager supports Cross Processor Interrupts (CPI) equivalent to the 39APIC IPIs. There are two routed voyager interrupt lines provided to 40each slot. 41 42Processor Cards 43--------------- 44 45These come in single, dyadic and quad configurations (the quads are 46problematic--see later). The maximum configuration is 8 quad cards 47for 32 way SMP. 48 49Quad Processors 50--------------- 51 52Because voyager only supplies two interrupt lines to each Processor 53card, the Quad processors have to be configured (and Bootstrapped) in 54as a pair of Master/Slave processors. 55 56In fact, most Quad cards only accept one VIC interrupt line, so they 57have one interrupt handling processor (called the VIC extended 58processor) and three non-interrupt handling processors. 59 60Current Status 61-------------- 62 63The System will boot on Mono, Dyad and Quad cards. There was 64originally a Quad boot problem which has been fixed by proper gdt 65alignment in the initial boot loader. If you still cannot get your 66voyager system to boot, email me at: 67 68<J.E.J.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> 69 70 71The Quad cards now support using the separate Quad CPI vectors instead 72of going through the VIC mailbox system. 73 74The Level 4 architecture (3430 and 3360 Machines) should also work 75fine. 76 77Dump Switch 78----------- 79 80The voyager dump switch sends out a broadcast NMI which the voyager 81code intercepts and does a task dump. 82 83Power Switch 84------------ 85 86The front panel power switch is intercepted by the kernel and should 87cause a system shutdown and power off. 88 89A Note About Mixed CPU Systems 90------------------------------ 91 92Linux isn't designed to handle mixed CPU systems very well. In order 93to get everything going you *must* make sure that your lowest 94capability CPU is used for booting. Also, mixing CPU classes 95(e.g. 486 and 586) is really not going to work very well at all. 96