Xen users - Mar 2010 - What is necessary for AMD IOMMU support

Hi,

I was just wondering, what exactly is necessary to use IOMMU with AMD CPUs. From
what
CPU family it''s on the chip and are other things necessary, like a
certain chipset on
the motherboard?

I own a Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 board and AMD 4050e CPU. I can enable/disable
virtualization
in the BIOS. Will that be enough to switch on IOMMU and run a non-PV Windows?

BR,
Carsten.

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This bios has a specific option for IOMMU. For intel chipsets, it
would be a seperate option called "Directed IO for VT",
"VT-x", or
something mentioning VT. Not exactly sure what AMD calls it since I do
not have much AMD hardware. In my experience gigabyte''s bios
doesn''t
typically have IOMMU options for either intel or amd.

- chris

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Carsten Schiers <carsten@schiers.de>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was just wondering, what exactly is necessary to use IOMMU with AMD CPUs.
From what
> CPU family it''s on the chip and are other things necessary, like a
certain chipset on
> the motherboard?
>
> I own a Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 board and AMD 4050e CPU. I can enable/disable
virtualization
> in the BIOS. Will that be enough to switch on IOMMU and run a non-PV
Windows?
>
> BR,
> Carsten.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
>
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> Hi,
>
> I was just wondering, what exactly is necessary to use IOMMU with AMD
> CPUs. From what
> CPU family it''s on the chip and are other things necessary, like a
certain
> chipset on
> the motherboard?
You will need a mainboard with AMD-800 chipset. The BIOS needs to support
IOMMU.

> I own a Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 board and AMD 4050e CPU. I can enable/disable
> virtualization
> in the BIOS. Will that be enough to switch on IOMMU and run a non-PV
> Windows?
You will at least a new mainboard with the new AMD-800 chipset. But I
don''t know if the current boards spport the 4050e CPU.


best, Mark


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On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 02:35:44PM +0200, Carsten Schiers
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was just wondering, what exactly is necessary to use IOMMU with AMD CPUs.
From what
> CPU family it''s on the chip and are other things necessary, like a
certain chipset on
> the motherboard?
> 
> I own a Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 board and AMD 4050e CPU. I can enable/disable
virtualization
> in the BIOS. Will that be enough to switch on IOMMU and run a non-PV
Windows?
> 
Please check this wiki page:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenPCIpassthrough

It should have more information for you.

-- Pasi


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Thank you all folks. So the plan is:

  - try Xen 4.0 (like to do that anyway) and check whether HW IOMMU 
shows up (not very probable)
  - use IOMMU=soft instead, which results in the same functionality

BR,
Carsten.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Pasi Kärkkäinen [mailto:pasik@iki.fi] 
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 31. März 2010 17:48
An: Carsten Schiers
Cc: xen-users@lists.xensource.com
Betreff: Re: [Xen-users] What is necessary for AMD IOMMU support

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 02:35:44PM +0200, Carsten Schiers
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was just wondering, what exactly is necessary to use IOMMU with AMD 
CPUs. From what
> CPU family it''s on the chip and are other things necessary, like a
certain chipset on 
> the motherboard?
> 
> I own a Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 board and AMD 4050e CPU. I can 
enable/disable virtualization
> in the BIOS. Will that be enough to switch on IOMMU and run a non-PV 
Windows?
> 
Please check this wiki page:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenPCIpassthrough

It should have more information for you.

-- Pasi




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