The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    What is "Platform type" in CPUID

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by iceheart72, May 1, 2014.

  1. iceheart72

    iceheart72 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    The question is: what does "Platform type/ID" part mean in CPUID? Usually it takes a value of 80h, 02h, 20h, A0h, etc. I thought it was connected to the socket type of the processor, but I am unsure and definitely I didn't find an explanation of it.
    And in my computer's BIOS, I have microcode patches for one platform 02h, four times 80h, and an another one for platform id for A0h - which matches the actual processor. If they were identifying the socket, the meaning of "socket type" wouln't make much sense, since of course there is only one socket on a mainboard...

    Any ideas on this? Is it just some arbitrary value called like this?
     
    iceheart72, May 1, 2014
    #1
  2. Dufus

    Dufus .

    Reputations:
    1,194
    Messages:
    1,336
    Likes Received:
    548
    Trophy Points:
    131
    Where are you getting these values from? CPUID instruction does not contain the platform ID, MSR 0x17 does.

    Are you actually looking at microcode platform types? These are a mask of supported platform ID's.
     
    Dufus, May 1, 2014
    #2
  3. iceheart72

    iceheart72 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi!

    Probably from MSR then. The microcode updates also have these values in their name. And where is the specification of the platform IDs? It is still unclear, why there are different platform ID's in the microcode list.
     
    iceheart72, May 1, 2014
    #3
  4. Dufus

    Dufus .

    Reputations:
    1,194
    Messages:
    1,336
    Likes Received:
    548
    Trophy Points:
    131
    With Intel. I couldn't point you to anywhere in particular but I can give an example.

    Haswell Desktop i7-4770K, LGA1150, CPUID processor Sig 0x306C3, MSR 0x17 bits 52:50 = 1
    Haswell Mobile i7-4700MQ, PGA946, CPUID, processor Sig 0x306C3, MSR 0x17 bits 52:50 = 4
    Haswell Mobile i7-4702HQ, BGA1364, CPUID processor Sig 0x306C3, MSR 0x17 bits 52:50 = 5

    Plaform ID is 1 shift left value of MSR 0x17 bits 52:50 so
    1 = 0x02
    4 = 0x10
    5 = 0x20

    You might find the microcode platform mask (ID) for 0x306C3 is 0x32 in which case all the above processors are included. For instance 0x20 is bit 5 and bit 5 is also set in 0x32. If the microcode platform mask (ID) was 0x12 then the 4702HQ would not be included.

    Hope that helps.
     
    Dufus, May 1, 2014
    #4
  5. iceheart72

    iceheart72 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    That helped, thanks a lot. So it is about sockets anyway, but in the microcode list they just appear and-ed together. Now the only question is, where is that list for a given CPU. :) Skimmed through all INTEL IA-32 manuals in vain...
     
    iceheart72, May 1, 2014
    #5