ES Xeon Discussion

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RolloZ170

Well-Known Member
Apr 24, 2016
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Hi, i have a Asus Z10PE-D8 bios 3501 with dual E5-2650-V4 ES QHV6
anyone update the bios to 4101? is lost the support for the ES processors?
greetings
i can not test that because i don't have that board,
but i checked the file, the microcode 406F0 is still there.
for what reason do you want to update the bios ?
the microcodes for ES are NOT updated by intel.
 

sL1pKn07

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Jan 11, 2018
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because IDK if Asus retired the ES support in the actual bios due the Spectre/meltdown flaw (is never fixed in ES processors)
 

RolloZ170

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Apr 24, 2016
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because IDK if Asus retired the ES support in the actual bios due the Spectre/meltdown flaw (is never fixed in ES processors)
as i say'd, the microcodes for haswell-ep ES and broadwell-EP ES are still there but still the old ones(there are no new)
 

sL1pKn07

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Jan 11, 2018
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nothing in particular, if the ES support is still here in the new bios, i have no reasons to stall in the old ones

greetings
 

RolloZ170

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Apr 24, 2016
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nothing in particular, if the ES support is still here in the new bios, i have no reasons to stall in the old ones
greetings
never change a running system. apart from the ES support. something else can become unsupported.
there is a notice on every mainboard manufacturer site: if you have NO problem, NO issues, do NOT update the BIOS.
 

JoshDi

Active Member
Jun 13, 2019
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If anyone is interested in a QL1K (Xeon Platinum 8160) ES, please let me know. I have an extra and can help you to get this working in your setup.
 

Ivan Dimitrov

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Jul 10, 2016
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@RolloZ170 could you please recommend a Cascade Lake Xeon stepping with 16-24 cores which will work with no issues for virtualization. Ideally it should have Specter/Meltdown microcode fixes and work with X11SPI-TF and BIOS v3.
From what I've read so far I should focus on the QS samples only. Any other things I should be aware?
Thanks.
 

RolloZ170

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Apr 24, 2016
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@RolloZ170 could you please recommend a Cascade Lake Xeon stepping with 16-24 cores which will work with no issues for virtualization. Ideally it should have Specter/Meltdown microcode fixes and work with X11SPI-TF and BIOS v3.
From what I've read so far I should focus on the QS samples only. Any other things I should be aware?
Thanks.
there are NO bad cascade lake ES like the skylake A0/B0 ones.
all Cascade Lake ES2(QQ8A,QQ8M...) steppings are A0, same stepping than first production units and they're QS versions(i.e. Platinum 8260M QS QPKD is A0 too)
later steppings B0 and B1 have some spectre/meltdown fixes in hardware.
unfortunaly i have no experience in virtualisation.
QQ8M(16C A0) is cheap and maybe worth to it give a chance.
look out for QPxx and QRxx QS.
 

morockin

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Sep 13, 2020
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Likely a futile question: Has anyone been able to setup Optane acceleration for a single SATA drive when using ES chips? I can't get the Optane drivers/software to install under Windows because it reads my CPUs as incompatible but I am wondering if this is just my problem or others have seen it as well. If this is a general problem, then I may invest some time in trying out how to force install the driver/software package and/or bypass the CPU check.
 

JoshDi

Active Member
Jun 13, 2019
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Likely a futile question: Has anyone been able to setup Optane acceleration for a single SATA drive when using ES chips? I can't get the Optane drivers/software to install under Windows because it reads my CPUs as incompatible but I am wondering if this is just my problem or others have seen it as well. If this is a general problem, then I may invest some time in trying out how to force install the driver/software package and/or bypass the CPU check.
What does your BIOS say? Can you enable Optane acceleration in there or does it say its enabled? This might not work with ES Chips since Windows is not reporting your chip as compatible hardware.


 
Last edited:

morockin

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Sep 13, 2020
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What does your BIOS say? Can you enable Optane acceleration in there or does it say its enabled? This might not work with ES Chips since Windows is not reporting your chip as compatible hardware.


I've scoured the (modded) bios on my Asus Sage C621E and can't find anywhere to enable Optane acceleration for an SATA drive (there are settings for system acceleration with Optane). There also isn't anything in the Asus documentation. From what I've read in the Intel literature, drive acceleration does not require a BIOS switch but is software managed, unless I am missing something? I've confirmed that my ES chips (QL1K) *should* support Optane, but again things are never clear with ES chips.
 

RolloZ170

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Apr 24, 2016
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I've confirmed that my ES chips (QL1K) *should* support Optane, but again things are never clear with ES chips.
QL1K is the Platinum 8160 ES2
Datasheet of platinum 8160 confirms optane is NOT supported

Advanced Technologies
Intel® Optane™ Memory Supported ‡
No

Intel® Speed Shift Technology
Yes

Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 ‡
No
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology ‡
2.0
Intel vPro® Platform Eligibility ‡
Yes
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology ‡
Yes
Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) ‡
Yes
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) ‡
Yes
Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) ‡
Yes
Intel® Transactional Synchronization Extensions
Yes
Intel® 64 ‡
Yes
Instruction Set Extensions
Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX, Intel® AVX2, Intel® AVX-512
# of AVX-512 FMA Units
2
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology
Yes
Intel® Volume Management Device (VMD)
Yes
 

morockin

New Member
Sep 13, 2020
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QL1K is the Platinum 8160 ES2
Datasheet of platinum 8160 confirms optane is NOT supported

Advanced Technologies
Intel® Optane™ Memory Supported ‡
No

Intel® Speed Shift Technology
Yes

Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 ‡
No
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology ‡
2.0
Intel vPro® Platform Eligibility ‡
Yes
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology ‡
Yes
Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) ‡
Yes
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) ‡
Yes
Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) ‡
Yes
Intel® Transactional Synchronization Extensions
Yes
Intel® 64 ‡
Yes
Instruction Set Extensions
Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX, Intel® AVX2, Intel® AVX-512
# of AVX-512 FMA Units
2
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology
Yes
Intel® Volume Management Device (VMD)
Yes
Rollo, you are 100% correct, don't know how I missed that since I had reviewed the ARK profile. Apologies for the wasted posts!
 
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Culbrelai

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Jan 2, 2021
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Hi, new here. Someone help me out. Supermicro X11-DPH-T.

says it needs



  • BIOS version 3.0a or above is required to support 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors-SP
  • BIOS version 3.2 or above is required to support 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors (codenamed Cascade Lake-R)

Yet I read here that to support ES Xeons, Bios must be 2.0? What am I missing. Build i was planning would put two Xeon Platinum 8256 QRAP QS into said motherboard.
 

RolloZ170

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Apr 24, 2016
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Yet I read here that to support ES Xeons, Bios must be 2.0? What am I missing. Build i was planning would put two Xeon Platinum 8256 QRAP QS into said motherboard.
Bios 2.x(or lower) is required to run Skylake ES on supermicro boards(i.e. QLxx ones)
your QRAP is a Cascade Lake(2nd Gen) and needs at least Bios 3.0(the first with cascade lake support)
 

Culbrelai

New Member
Jan 2, 2021
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Bios 2.x(or lower) is required to run Skylake ES on supermicro boards(i.e. QLxx ones)
your QRAP is a Cascade Lake(2nd Gen) and needs at least Bios 3.0(the first with cascade lake support)
Interesting and thanks. Though I suppose it doesn’t matter much considering QS chips are essentially retail right? Didn’t see a “QS discussion” topic =P