SPEC CPU2006 Platform Settings for Intel-based systems

Firmware / BIOS / Microcode Settings

Hardware Prefetcher:

This BIOS option allows the enabling/disabling of a processor mechanism to prefetch data into the cache according to a pattern-recognition algorithm. This default setting is "Enabled".

In some cases, setting this option to Disabled may improve performance. Users should only disable this option after performing application benchmarking to verify improved performance in their environment.

Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch:

This BIOS option allows the enabling/disabling of a processor mechanism to fetch the adjacent cache line within a 128-byte sector that contains the data needed due to a cache line miss. This default setting is "Enabled".

In some cases, setting this option to Disabled may improve performance. Users should only disable this option after performing application benchmarking to verify improved performance in their environment.

Hyper-Threading:

Disabling Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology reduces the number of threads per core to 1. The default is Enabled; in this case each core provides additional resources for executing up to 2 threads in parallel.

Power Management Policy:

This option selects the power managment policy. If this option is set to "Custom", the processor power management options are selectable independently.

Energy Performance:

This item is displayed when the EIST item is set to "Enabled". This option can only be selectable when the Power Management Policy is set to "Custom". This item decides the energy efficiency policy which is the energy per performance rate. If the highest performance is preferred, this option should be set to "Performance".

Patrol Scrub:

Patrol Scrub is a mechanism for memory controller to periodically read all memory. Corrected read data is written back to memory when a correctable error is detected. This default setting is "Enabled".