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Profile bozz4science
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Message 1907 - Posted: 1 Aug 2020, 19:57:59 UTC
Last modified: 1 Aug 2020, 20:00:23 UTC

After having recently compared runtimes amongst my finished WUs I realised that across different OS the avx applications usually show a huge advantage over sse2 applications. Comparing those runtimes to the average runtime of my WUs (sse2 application), that performance difference amounts to a whopping ~4-5 times.

As I am currently only aware of a SSE2 application for MacOS, is there any opportunity to provide an AVX app for MacOS as well? My CPU is an i5-4278U CPU in an old MacBook that would offer support for the AVX instruction set, and thus I would love to capitalise on the efficiency that is to be gained over SSE2 apparently.

Would appreciate a short feedback! Thanks

Falconet
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Message 1910 - Posted: 2 Aug 2020, 13:06:19 UTC - in response to Message 1907.

I haven't seen anything nearly as much as 4-5 times faster with the AVX app over the FMA or SSE2 apps. Valterc himself has said the AVX and FMA apps only provide a small increase in speed, probably under 10%.

Perhaps the difference lies in 2 things:

1 - Were those others running Linux? Linux is quite a bit faster for TN-Grid when compared to Windows. Perhaps is this also the case when compared to Macintosh?

2 - Different CPUs. Newer and faster than your i5-4278U.

I can't view your hosts or your tasks but I would guess it is either or both of these things.
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Message 1911 - Posted: 2 Aug 2020, 14:35:28 UTC - in response to Message 1910.
Last modified: 2 Aug 2020, 14:44:09 UTC

Thanks for getting back to me and sorry for my assumptions that lead to this fallacy. I have to admit that I didn't conduct my analysis thoroughly but you are completely right. Most of the systems, I compared my runtimes to, were Linux based and a small subset thereof were newer model Ryzen chips which obviously were the ones with the best runtimes. What they all had in common was however that all were running the avx application. That's were my naive conclusion was coming from.

I guess then that most of the performance difference is actually coming from the more powerful chips. Might be worthwhile considering to upgrade my system next year and start saving for a newer Ryzen chip. :) I see that you also have a similar setup to mine (X5650 vs. my X5660) which returns quite similar runtimes in the range of ~25-30,000 sec.

Still might try then to run a few tasks in a Linux VM and see if I can gain some performance here.

Cheers
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Falconet
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Message 1912 - Posted: 2 Aug 2020, 16:06:53 UTC - in response to Message 1911.

Linux is indeed faster when compared to Windows. However I'm not sure about Mac OS.

I seem to remember that, at WCG, some people reported that Macintosh was also faster on the projects using AutoDock Vina, a software that runs around 50% faster on Linux than on Windows.

Linux and Mac have some shared code base or something, right? So I guess it's possible that Mac OS already has the same benefits as Linux.


Good luck!
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Profile Keith Myers
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Message 1919 - Posted: 11 Aug 2020, 23:58:36 UTC

Main difference is the more modern cpu architecture of the Ryzen 3000 cpus using Zen 2 microarchitecture.

There is even a big difference from the AMD cpus using Zen+ arch compared to Zen 2.

My Ryzen and TR cpus embarrass my old Broadwell Xeon and i7-6850K cpus on every one of my projects.

Profile bozz4science
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Message 1920 - Posted: 13 Aug 2020, 10:59:26 UTC
Last modified: 13 Aug 2020, 11:04:07 UTC

Thank you guys for responding. Meanwhile I ran a few tasks on my X5660 Xeon based Dual boot machine with Win10 and Linux Mint and Linux indeed on average yields slightly improved but way more stable runtimes around ø 27,000 sec vs. 26,000-29,000 sec on the Win10 partition. However my "newer" laptop i5 Haswell CPU reduces the runtime by ~40-50%, so nearly cuts it in half.

I can see that the modern CPU architectures can easily outperform that ancient CPU :) Unfortunately the Xeon processor is very power hungry and not very efficient compared to modern standards, and thus is eating away the initial costs of purchase monthly in terms of electricity when running 24/7. So the transition to a modern CPU-based system is not only beneficial for increasing performance but also the only rational way I see long-term to save on electricity which is pretty expensive in Germany and comes at ~0.32 €/kWh. Looking at the specs at f.ex. a Ryzen 7 3700X chip which has only a TDP of 65 W vs. 95W of my Xeon, the comparison is just ridiculous (of course +10 yrs difference of tech innovation). A change might be long overdue as I haven't had a decent desktop for many years and been mostly doing work on a laptop from 2014...


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