Amazon.com, Inc.
Logic for configuring processors in a server computer

Abstract:

A server computer can have multiple potential configurations depending on a state of an input signal. In a first potential configuration, a single-platform model is used with multiple processors booted using a single BIOS. The multiple processors can have a bus there between allowing processor-to-processor communication. In a second potential configuration, a multi-platform model is used with multiple processors booted using separate BIOS. In this configuration, the bus between the processors is disabled so that the platforms operate autonomously. The hardware can be extended to support additional processors, such as 4, 8, etc. A failover mode also allows the hardware to detect a hardware error (e.g., bus error) and dynamically reconfigure the processors to use an alternative bus. With the failover, the addressing of the processors can be modified to reconfigure the server computer to compensate for the hardware error.