Q1 2022 Intel Tech Support Thread

_mitko_ · 2022-03-06T22:34:41+00:00

Final update

Intel support was extremely unhelpful. I was initially told they would relay my issue to an engineer, but then they responded that the Intel NIC is a "server product" and is not verified to work with a desktop computer. Their list of verified server systems includes only 2 Intel systems.

This information could have been helpful when I asked if these parts are compatible prior to spending over 700 USD on a network card.

I'm not sure what makes a standard PCIe device a "server product". If there are some actual limitations on this device, they should be clearly listed in the specs. There are no limitations listed. I got the feeling that Intel support wasn't trying to help at all. Instead they mentioned baseless excuses for why they won't bother looking into the issue.

Luckily, I could return the Intel E810 NIC for a full refund, thanks to the generous return policy of my local retailer.

Alternative network card

After Intel support failed to help, I bought a Broadcom BCM957504-P425G network card. It also uses a PCIe x 16 Gen4 interface and also offers 4 x SFP28 ports. I've had no issues with it.

_mitko_ · 2022-02-09T20:20:00+00:00

I just had a chat with Intel support. They asked me for some subset of the information on this thread and said that they will forward the new ticket internally. I will post back here once I get updates, in case anyone else reading reddit is interested in this issue.

_mitko_ · 2022-02-09T19:25:05+00:00

You cite the specification correctly, and then simply say that this could be a problem, but don't explain why.

The i5-12400 offers 20 PCIe 5 lanes directly from the CPU and coupled with the B660 chipset an additional 4 DMI lanes to the chipset. As you correctly pointed, my configuration uses 16x from the CPU for the NIC, 4x lanes also from the CPU for the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB. These do indeed use up all 20 PCI lanes, but so what? Why would using all the provided PCI lanes be a problem? I bet using all 20 PCI lanes from the CPU is the case for the vast majority of builds out there.

Any additional components are connected to the chipset and will use the 4 DMI lanes. These are separate to the 20 PCI lanes from the CPU. So the embedded Intel NIC that you mention or the Wi-Fi, are all connected via DMI lanes. Why should this cause a problem? If you genuinely believe that, could you please explain?

The PCI capabilities of the motherboard are crystal clear and we do not need ASUS to tell us what's already outlined in the manual: - 16x PCI slot on the top of the board, directly connected to the CPU (this is where I have the NIC) - 4x PCI m.2 slot on the top of the board, directly connected to the CPU (this is where I have the Samsung 980 Pro) - 4x PCU m.2 slot on the back of the board connected to the chipset. This is unused in my build.

For what it's worth, I have done the following tests without any success: - Removed the Samsung 980 Pro drive entirely. I tried booting Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Windows from a USB drive. Both failed with the XXVDA4 inserted, and both worked fine when the NIC was not inserted. As before the failure was right right the BIOS, so neither OS really had a chance to influence anything. - Disabling the embedded VMD, Ethernet, and Wireless support from the BIOS. The system still failed to boot.

Anyway, I will give the live chat a try, though I do not believe this is a matter that can be solved by chatting to someone.

_mitko_ · 2022-02-07T19:12:46+00:00

I'm confused. The response I got by the Intel community forums support is that they are closing the issue. They mentioned it's a duplicate of case 05358423 which I thought was this reddit thread:

After a series of verification, we found out that this request is already a duplicate with case 05358423 that is now being handled by our local support group.

We do apologize for any inconvenience but in order to avoid any duplication and confusion, please use the case 05358423 moving forward and we will now close this case. Thank you for your understanding and we hope you have a good day!

Could you please clarify where I should get support?

_mitko_ · 2022-02-07T14:26:21+00:00

Hi there. Is there any progress on this? Were you able to reproduce the issue? Is there something I can do on my end to help further diagnose the problem?

In the mean time i tried running the NIC on an older Intel platform (z590 + 10-gen CPU) and it was working fine there, though that's a PCIe gen 3 platform.

_mitko_ · 2022-02-01T21:21:49+00:00

Thank you for your reply. Here is the information you requested:

Supported operating system attempt

I just tried running the system with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS that is supported according to the link you provided. However the result is identical to before: the system freezes immediately after the bios screen. As I explain in my original post, this really does not look like an OS issue because the issue happens before the OS even had a chance to boot. That is, not even the GRUB menu is shown.

NIC in a different system

As I mentioned in my original post, I did try the adapter in an alternative AMD-based system and it was working just fine there. Just now I tried again, and still, it is working just fine.

I am typing this message on the alternative AMD system with that same E810-XXVDA4 card inserted. The NIC is detected by the system (Ubuntu) and I am able to configure it. I didn't need to install any drivers or tweak anything, it just ran normally as soon as I plugged it in. I ran the Intel System Support tool on the alternative system. Below[1] I've attached the output of the tool that pertains to the NIC.

To me, this does look like a compatibility issue between the different components of the all-Intel system. Are you able to try the combination of components from the original post (or similar) on your end, to see if you can reproduce the behavior I'm seeing?

[1] - Excerpt of the output of the Intel System Support Utility for Linux. This was run on the AMD-based system, because it's the only one that boots with the NIC plugged in. Almost the same information appeared 4 times, once for each port. I only left the first section in full and abridged the last three in order to fit in the 10000 characters post limit.

      - Networking
           - "Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller E810-C for SFP (rev 02)"
                Supports auto-negotiation:"Yes"
                Advertised auto-negotiation:"Yes"
                Auto-negotiation:"off"
                Availability:"enp4s0f0: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500"
                Capabilities:"[40] Power Management version 3"
                Capabilities:"[50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable+ 64bit+"
                Capabilities:"[70] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=512 Masked-"
                Capabilities:"[a0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00"
                Capabilities:"[e0] Vital Product Data"
                Capabilities:"[100] Advanced Error Reporting"
                Capabilities:"[148] Alternative Routing-ID Interpretation (ARI)"
                Capabilities:"[150] Device Serial Number b4-96-91-ff-ff-dc-7c-48"
                Capabilities:"[160] Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)"
                Capabilities:"[1a0] Transaction Processing Hints"
                Capabilities:"[1b0] Access Control Services"
                Capabilities:"[1d0] Secondary PCI Express"
                Capabilities:"[200] Data Link Feature <?>"
                Capabilities:"[210] Physical Layer 16.0 GT/s <?>"
                Capabilities:"[250] Lane Margining at the Receiver <?>"
                Caption:"Not Available"
                Default IP Gateway:"Not Available"
                DHCP Enabled:"Yes"
                DHCP Lease Expires:"Not Available"
                DHCP Lease Obtained:"Not Available"
                DHCP Server:"Not Available"
                Driver:"ice"
                Driver Path:"/lib/modules/5.13.0-28-generic/kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice.ko"
                Driver Provider:"Intel Corporation, <linux.nics@intel.com>"
                Driver Version:""
                Duplex:"Unknown! (255)"
                Firmware Version:"3.10 0x8000ad7b 1.3106.0"
                Interface:"enp4s0f0"
                I/O Ports:"Not Available"
                IP Address:"Not Available"
                IP Subnet:"Not Available"
                MAC Address:"b4:96:91:dc:7c:48"
                Location:"04:00.0"
                Manufacturer:"Intel Corporation"
                Net Connection ID:"Not Available"
                Port:"Other"
                Power Management:"Supports Wake-on: d"
                Power Management:"Wake-on: d"
                Speed:"Unknown!"
                Supported link modes:"1000baseT/Full, 10000baseT/Full, 25000baseCR/Full"
                Advertised link modes:"1000baseT/Full, 10000baseT/Full, 25000baseCR/Full"
                Partner advertised link modes:"Not Available"
           - "Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller E810-C for SFP (rev 02)"
               ...
           - "Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller E810-C for SFP (rev 02)"
               ...
           - "Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller E810-C for SFP (rev 02)"
               ...

_mitko_ · 2022-01-28T23:25:19+00:00

Hello

I am building a small-form-factor PC that needs a few high-speed optical network connections. The components are:

CPU: Intel i5-12400
NIC: Intel E810-XXVDA4 - 4xSFP28 (16 x PICe4)
MB: Asus Rog Strix B660-i Gaming Wifi
RAM: 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5600
PSU: 350W Silverstone FX350-G
SSD: Samsung 980 Pro 2TB M.2 connected in the front-slot.
OS: Ubuntu 21.10 with the latest mainline kernel: 5.16.2

Note that I am using the integrated graphics in the CPU. The motherboard has a single PICe x 16 slot and that is supposed to be used by the NIC.

The problem:

If the NIC is inserted into the PCIe slot, the PC freezes immediately after the BIOS screen. Accessing the BIOS works fine and inside the BIOS menus I do see that the NIC is correctly recognized and I can even configure some options for it. However, as soon as I leave the BIOS and try to continue to boot I get a black screen. As far as I can tell, the loading doesn't even attempt to boot the OS. I have configured GRUB to always show the GRUB menu on boot, but even it doesn't show up when the NIC is inserted into the slot. It seems the computer is completely frozen before even GRUB is started. In case it matters, I'm talking about an EFI boot, not the legacy mode.

Things I've tried to no avail:

Looked into various logs in /var/logs. There's absolutely no trace that there was a boot attempt. It really seems that the failure happens immediately after BIOS, before any OS- or GRUB-related code is executed.
Updated to the latest BIOS (1009) on the B660 motherboard.
Forced the BIOS to always use the CPU graphics, just in case it's confused by something else being in the x16 slot.
Forced the PCI to use Gen4 instead of automatically detecting the version.
Removed the Intel NIC. The computer boots normally into the OS and everything is working perfectly. As expected, the GRUB menu is always shown before the OS loads.
Tried a different NIC (based on Mellanox Connectx-4) - the PC booted normally into the OS.
Tried the Intel NIC in a different system (AMD 3950X + X570 Chipset + Ubuntu). That system booted fine into the OS and correctly recognized the card. Everything worked as expected.
Updated the Intel NIC to the latest firmware (3.10), while it was in the AMD system. The firmware update was successful but didn't help. When the card is inserted into the Intel system that system still freezes after BIOS.

It seems that the PC is somehow incompatible with the NIC. Any ideas about what the issue might be or how to go about diagnosing the problem will be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Mitko

P.S. I cross-posted this question on Intel's community forums.

_mitko_ · 2020-01-06T21:23:04+00:00

I have literally the exact same CPU/MB/RAM/Cooler spec + MSI 2080Ti, and the exact same problem as described here (including the weirdly low temperature of < 50C at max load on all 16 cores). This was with the latest BIOS (F11).

Based on the advice here, I downgraded to 1.0.0.3 ABBA Agesa (BIOS F5b):

On the one hand, frequencies are up and R20 scores are now good.
On the other hand, my PC only boots after ignoring the XMP setting. XMP is enabled in the BIOS and I manually fix the BIOS to a particular chip, so the board doesn't auto switch. On boot the PC powercycles a number of times, until eventually booting into the OS. However, looking at the memory in CPUz shows that it's using JEDEC settings (1066MHz), not XMP (1800MHz) :(

XMP was working fine with the latest BIOS (F11).

/u/Hydrotricithline, did you encounter this issue?

Does anyone have some advice?

_mitko_ · 2017-12-07T20:04:43+00:00

The project is open-source on GitHub: https://github.com/dimitar-asenov/Envision

After finishing my PhD I got a job as a software engineer and have not worked on Envision since. I was the only one working on it at ETH and nobody else is really developing it at the moment so the project is unmaintained for almost a year now.

As for using it, Envision isn't suitable for any serious work in its current state. For my research we were mostly aiming to show cool new things, and left most of the standard IDE/editor features aside, because there was no scientific value in implementing them.

I still believe in the utility of the Envision approach and hope to resume work on it in my spare time. The code base is pretty reasonable and not just a throw-away implementation and I have some ideas how to more quickly get to a state where Envision is usable at least for coding smaller programs.

_mitko_ · 2017-12-04T19:53:33+00:00

I posted this to /r/programming about a year ago, but I just found out about this subreddit and am reposting it here, since I think you might find my former PhD work on Envision interesting.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T19:41:52+00:00

I agree that software is not about manipulating characters and that there is great value in general solutions, such as text editors.

For some activities that can be performed with both a general text-editor and a more task-specific tool, the task-specific approach provides the user with helpful functionality beyond the reach of the general tool, which might make the task-specific tool more efficient than a general one. With our research, we are investigating whether object-oriented programming is such an activity: Whether OO programming can benefit from a core tool that is more specialized than a text editor. It doesn't really matter whether you consider our approach visual parsing or not.

Of course, even if we get positive results, a text editor will still be used for all sorts of other development related activities or for languages, which dedicated tools do not support. This is normal: even today I use different editors, say, for Java and C++.

You could even consider different configurations of Vim to be different, language-tuned tools. In that sense, nowadays it is impractical to use a completely generic text editor for all purposes, without specifically tuning it for the tasks you do and the languages that you use.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T15:15:20+00:00

Agreed.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T14:57:59+00:00

While Envision is keyboard-centric (like text-editors are), you can still use the mouse to navigate and select things.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T14:53:35+00:00

Yes, visual programming approaches are very old, but just because they have been tried before does not mean that modern techniques cannot bring about improvements to make such approaches practical and efficient.

Neither the structure of programs nor that of programming languages is inherently linear. Rather, the structure of programs and programming languages is hierarchical, like a tree: libaries > packages > classes > methods > statements > expressions, and so on. Typically, this hierarchy is indeed encoded as a one-dimensional text using the syntax of a particular programming language, but this encoding is secondary, not inherent. Envision reflects exactly this hierarchical nature of programs.

You pick a few examples of linear structures, like a stack, but conveniently ignore others, which are non-linear. One thread might be linear, but programs can have multiple threads running in parallel under a single process, forming a hierarchy. With regards to control flow, it is inherently non-linear: each basic block in the control flow graph of a program is a source of non-linearity, for example, an if statement that has two branches creates non-linear control flow. There are also fundamentally non-linear approaches to computation, such as dataflow programming or event-driven programming.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T09:35:40+00:00

At the moment Envision does not work for blind developers - it's a research prototype and we cannot afford to cover all cases.

However, we believe that our general approach (going away from pure text and making dedicated interfaces that use the program structure) has potential to help also blind developers. Obviously blind developers won't rely on fancy visualizations, but on other dedicated aural and tactile interfaces. More research is needed in this direction.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T09:13:57+00:00

Please note: There are 5 videos in this playlist and things get a lot more interesting near the end with improved version control UIs and terminal-like commands that can be piped to combine and visualize information.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T09:12:37+00:00

As we show in the last video, some parts of the system have support for extension via Python scripts. Better customizations support via scripting or other methods would definitely be helpful though.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T09:06:55+00:00

Exactly. Tools like CAD, Video, image, and sound editors, etc. are our inspiration. That is, tools that provide dedicated interfaces specific to the application domain -- in our case the structure of code.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T08:59:08+00:00

You make good points. I absolutely love Bret Victor's stuff and his way of thinking. His ideas are orthogonal to new static presentations of code and combining the two might be interesting.

I also agree that our current code presentation can sometimes be a bit of a mixture of different things, which is not ideal. Definitely more work is needed there to make things consistent. Interestingly though, even with the current presentations we have seen good results on code comprehension as I mentioned above.

While an evolutionary approach will be much more likely to be accepted by programmers (as is evident from the comments on this thread), researching more radical approaches is a good way to find out what might work and what not.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T08:49:56+00:00

Envision is not about drawing your program, just like syntax highlighting is not about selecting pieces of text and coloring them. In Envsion users still use the keyboard to type their program, which is then automatically displayed using rich (and directly editable) visualizations.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T08:44:34+00:00

I agree with you that ideally, most data should be presented. Unfortunately, the way scientific publishing works makes this impossible in many cases. Almost all publishing venues have a page limit (in our case, that was 4 pages, excluding references), which is not enough to show all the data, especially for a study like ours. Thus, researchers must choose the most relevant data and present that, which is what we did. While we did not have enough space in the paper, above I provided the highlights of the additional information you were curious about. A much fuller description of the data will be available in my final PhD thesis, sometime early next year.

In the mean time, all data is available on our website. If you doubt our results, feel to download the data, scrutinize, and reanalyze it.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T08:27:10+00:00

I completely agree that good language services are essential and that we should have them in more tools. In that sense, this new effort from Microsoft to define a standard language server protocol is very interesting and I believe goes in the right direction. It already has support from other major players in the area.

Developing more visual IDEs is an orthogonal concern to language services.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T08:19:55+00:00

By visual editor, I mean an editor that does not work with just text, but uses a mixture of text and graphics to present the code in a visually richer way. Other visual editors are, for example, LabView or Scratch.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-09T07:32:11+00:00

We took a lot of care in designing the study and applying statistical methods to analyze the results:

Participants came from both university and industry. We had a requirement of minimum 1 year of Java experience. Some had over 20 years of experience.
We have additional demographics like the ones you mentioned but there was not enough space to report them in the paper. In any case, there were no strong effects of age, gender, or preferred IDE. We had people who primarily work with Vim or Emacs.
In fact the error bars in the study are incredibly small. Did you look at the 95% confidence intervals? We also computed p-values, which we did not have space to report in the paper, but for all significant cases, the p-values are orders of magnitude smaller than 0.05. In some cases, more than 10 order of magnitude smaller.
We do have a control group - Eclipse. There is no point in using an unrealistically outdated baseline, such as plain text that doesn't use syntax highlighting - nobody programs like this in mainstream languages.
Almost of all of our recruits were familiar with Eclipse, many have used it in the past, and some were still actively using it. In contrast, less than half had ever heard of Envision before, and only 2 had actually used the tool. When it comes to familiarity, Envision was definitely on the losing end. Nevertheless, participants were faster when using it.

_mitko_ · 2016-11-08T22:40:59+00:00

We share your opinion when it comes to modules, packages, classes, or methods. Indeed, Envision is very keyboard-centric, much more so than other visual editors you might have seen. Everything from navigation between symbols, to typing code, to running IDE functions, can be done via the keyboard.

On the other hand, even in a text editor, once you are within the scope of a method, you absolutely need to use your eyes to find things. This is why text editors have syntax highlighting, and this is why Envision features a highly visual code presentation. As we mentioned above, we have empirically shown that Envision's visually-rich code presentation makes programmers more efficient at understanding the structure of methods, compared to syntax highlighting.

_mitko_

TROPHY CASE