Eurocom Scorpius Part 1

I just received my Eurocom Scorpius during the past week.

For those of you considering this system for running LINUX please read on about compatibility issues.

First of all, my primary purpose for the use of the laptop is for the setup and use of a enterprise network, all virtualized composed of 25 servers 6 BGP routers to study certain types of computing problems such as HTC and systems management and network capacity/routing problems associated with HTC scalability. The topic is Computational Genomics.

The network is composed of:

1 Windows 2008 RC2 server
6 Fedora 17 BGP routers with multiple interconnects through OpenVPN.
2 FreeBSD proxy security systems
1 OpenSolaris Server
1 Netware 4.1 Server (Legacy File Server)
1 Windows XP Workstation
1 Windows 7 Workstation
1 OS X workstation
10 Fedora 17 Servers for Bind, OpenLDAP, Sendmail, Samba, NAGIOS, Apache, Apache Tomcat, Subversion, Amanda, PostGRES, Condor (Genomics Compute Cluster of 4 nodes) and sipxecs.

While this is running in the background the laptop must be able to run the following:

KDE desktop, 2 Monitors at 1920x1080, Eclipse, route to and from an external destination network to my old laptop running a similar infrastructure however, with a much smaller capacity of the Qx9300 processor and 8GB address space not many servers (10).

This is currently ongoing, and construction of the infrastructure should be done by the end of October. I will post updates as the schedule progresses.

The laptop I ordered was with a i7 3610QM, 8GB of memory, with a ATI 7970, Matte panel L.E.D. and 750GB Momentus SSD assist drive. The laptops USB camera works fine, and is good at taking snapshots.

The 3610QM is easily capable of running half of the current infrastructure as is, however, I have on order for October 32GB of memory so that I can get the rest of the infrastructure up soon. One of the reasons I ordered the laptop was for its Chassis. I wasn't disappointed, and so far as LINUX goes the ability to add and remove components is very easy. Very important for us LINUX types who are finicky about hardware compatibility.

I have not had a look at the color controls for the keyboard yet. They do not appear to be configurable from LINUX, but that is usually a i2c issue or port. Something that should be easy to figure out with a memory tracker by booting Windows and firing up a trace on the util that allows those colors to be changed in Windows.

So for now, you will have to set the color in Windows, then boot into LINUX. I have not loaded Windows on this laptop yet, so the default is purple/violet backlight. The thought of loading windows just to change the back lighting is ghastly, so I will not being doing that soon.

Under LINUX here is the PCI list of the devices:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 6800
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Device aab0
04:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5289 (rev 01)
04:00.2 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 0a)
05:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9300 Wireless LAN adaptor (rev 01)

Fedora 17 recognizes the carbon fiber pad on the machine as multi-touch capable and it works well with Xorg.

ACPI support is pretty good, but I normally have it all turned off. Also, I normally download the rpm source packages from RedHats yum update repo so that I can rebuild the kernel with better CPU support and change the governors to performance as default. Which, I suggest you do as it improves idle efficiency of the virtual machines when you do and you get lower load averages on the host side.

I am surprised at the capacity and performance of the 3610QM. Light years above my Qx9300 it doesn't bat a eye lash as it plows through virtual machines and everything else I give it on the host side with running Eclipse (A giant of a IDE), all the while building all of the custom kernels for my project.

Incompatibility with only one component and that is the card reader, which out of the box Fedora 17 doesn't recognize. I don't plan on using the card reader on this laptop, so this isn't a concern. Since it is listed as a ACER USB device:

[hackus@shiva ~]$ lsusb |more
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 1bcf:0535 Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 147e:1002 Upek
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 5986:0365 Acer, Inc

I hear there are ways to get it too work, but it isn't a priority for me.

I specifically ordered the laptop with a ATI 7970 card, which is in the process of getting its open source stack fully DRI2 realized. However, it isn't quite there yet there. Most if not all of the 2D openGL stuff is fully accelerated from what I can tell using a software rasterizer. However, the 3D stuff for desktop effects are not yet there so you can't turn on all of the eye candy for KDE. But on the other hand, 2D opengl stuff works fine and most of the X Org opengl screen savers I tried worked fine. I bet the fglrx drivers work, how well, not sure.

But in my position, and the work I am pursuing, binary only add ons to kernels invite all sorts of mischief. Imagine restarting like 20 servers and cleaning up the mess and starting over for example any work I am doing because of a kernel crash of the hypervisor host. Don't have the time to beta test proprietary software. I did it for 10 years as a Windows admin in my 20's, not going there.

However, this will change with Fedora 18, due to be released in November, December time frame. I could build my own ddx/mesa libraries to do this on Fedora 17, and it would work right now as 3.4 supports Mesa 9 as well as the current Xorg server with Fedora 17 1.12.3.

But let me say that the incredible power of this Ivy Bridge processor even with software acceleration the X desktop works really well. In fact, works better than my accelerated 3870 card in my old laptop in my opinion with a Qx9300.

This concludes part 1.

Part 2 will go into different aspects of the laptop not mentioned yet, such as VT-d support (didn't go into that here because the 3610QM doesn't support VT-d) and Perhaps Fedora 18 support of 7970 and 32GB memory support, including a processor upgrade....probably the 3820QM or the 3920XM.

I will also cover support of Fedora 18, BIOS and Perhaps get the card reader going and change the keyboard color from LINUX.

Depends on what I have time for.

Very busy.

-Hack

-Hack

 

Wow - 20 virtual guests on a single laptop

Just curious - why didn't you go with a desktop for this purpose ?

 

Hi Hackus

I am considering getting this laptop but for a different purpose. I need to utilize the CUDA support of the GeForce GTX680M video card in Linux (Ubuntu). I have been told to avoid Optimus technology, of which this laptop has none. Did you have any issues with the graphics card in linux that might be able to give me an indication of how possible this is?

If you're interested in my application, I am looking at running the KinectFusion algorithm which is performed mostly on the GPU using CUDA, and compiled as part of the PCL libraries. I have got it working on an older computer but I really need one with a top-of-the-line graphics card in order to get the frame rate and resolution up higher.

 

Hackus, thanks for such a detailed report on linux compatibility on this hardware. I'm looking to get a Clevo P370EM and had been wondering if others had any success with it under linux. Good to see that you got the 7970M working at least for 2D acceleration. I'm curious how well 3D acceleration works using any of the available drivers. Looking forward to your Part 2.