{"id":456,"date":"2024-07-19T13:03:49","date_gmt":"2024-07-19T11:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/?p=456"},"modified":"2024-07-19T13:18:50","modified_gmt":"2024-07-19T11:18:50","slug":"lab-problem-esxi-8-on-nuc-with-intel-gen-14-cpu-meteor-lake-cpu-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/2024\/07\/19\/lab-problem-esxi-8-on-nuc-with-intel-gen-14-cpu-meteor-lake-cpu-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"Lab problem: ESXi 8 on NUC with Intel Gen 14 CPU (Meteor Lake) \u2013 CPU overview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If disabling the Efficient Cores (in BIOS) on your new NUC system doesn\u2019t help you to install ESXi 8 on your new NUC \u2013 then read on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Recently I got my hands on a new Asus NUC 14. The first thing that I went to do was to install ESXi 8 on it. I already knew that there would be some problems with the CPU since it has multiple core types \u2013 that is: E-Cores (efficient) and P-Cores (Performance). But according to the specifications this CPU generation (Intel 14th<\/sup> aka Meteor Lake) also has third \u201cLow Power Efficient\u201d core type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the CPU (Intel 155H) looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6x “Performance-cores”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8x “Efficient-cores”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2x “Low Power Efficient-cores”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To install ESXi on the machine I headed to the blog of William Lam (who has so many great resources on ESXi lab hardware and lab \u201chow to\u201d) \u2013 in this great article he shows two ways of getting ESXi to run on \u201cmulti core\u201d type CPUs : ESXi PSOD due to GP Exception 13 in world with Intel 13th Generation CPU (williamlam.com)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I started with option 1 from the above article (Disable Efficiency Cores, within system BIOS) \u2013 but that didn\u2019t seem to work \u2013 after some investigation I actually found out that the \u201cnew\u201d third type of cores (Low power Efficient cores) doesn\u2019t get disabled \u2013 so this concludes that option 1 doesn\u2019t work for meteor lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Option 2 on the other hand does work (adding \u201ccpuUniformityHardCheckPanic=FALSE\u201d, to the boot option). But the disadvantages here is that you are allowed to use all cores and the three core types are working at different speed \u2013 and that brings me to the primary reason for this article \u2013 the overview of the cores (number vs. type).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if you go to another great article of William Lam: Experimenting with ESXi CPU affinity and Intel Hybrid CPU Cores (williamlam.com)<\/a> then you will see how we are able to use CPU affinity to \u201clock\u201d the different virtual machines to the cores of your desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the article you see that the first 4 cores (0-3) are Performance cores and the rest of them are Efficient cores. – But on the Gen14 Meteor Lake CPU it\u2019s quite different!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Intel Gen 14 CPU (Meteor Lake) looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Performance cores = 0,9,10,11,12,13<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Efficient cores = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Low power efficient cores = 14,15<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I discovered this by running some CPU performance benchmarking on the different cores as you can see here: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Core
Core performance overview “Intel 155H”<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, there you have it \u2013 the list of the different cores on the Intel 14th<\/sup> gen and the reason why it doesn\u2019t help to disable the E-Cores when installing ESXi 8 on it \ud83d\ude0a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If disabling the Efficient Cores (in BIOS) on your new NUC system doesn\u2019t help you to install ESXi 8 on your new NUC \u2013 then read on!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,51,6,7],"tags":[23,52,54,53,4],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esxi","category-lab","category-vmware","category-vsphere","tag-esxi","tag-lab","tag-meteorlake","tag-nuc","tag-vsphere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469,"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmoller.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}