Intel Clear Linux: 16% more Ryzen 9 9950X performance

https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-os-amd-ryzen9-9950x

by abhinavk • 2 years ago

53 21 2 years ago

phoronix.com

tiffanyh• 2 years ago

PHP: 2x perf with Clear Linux vs Ubuntu

That's a staggering improvement.

https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-os-amd-ryzen9-9950x/6

RachelF• 2 years ago

That's what comes with actually using the instruction set of modern CPU's instead of the lowest common denominator instruction set.

However, note that some of the modern instructions like AVX-512 use a lot of electrical power on the CPU, for example pushing a 12gen Intel chip above 300W.

Arrath• 2 years ago

for example pushing a 12gen Intel chip above 300W

And pushing 13th and 14th gen chips into an early grave! /s

luyu_wu• 2 years ago

An interesting part of Zen 5 architecture was related to lowering the absurd instruction passthrough time/power if I remember correctly!

This definetly used to be the case on the older Intel implementations of large SIMD instructions (my Tiger lake chip being an anecdote)!

lathiat2• 2 years ago

Ubuntu is experimenting with making a more modern CPU build: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/trying-out-ubuntu-23-04-on-x8... https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-x86-64-v3-benchmark

Also -O3: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-Evaluating-O3-Optimized

I am not sure off hand how that CPU level compares to Intel Clear Linux's options. The phoronix comparison fo Ubuntu with and without v3 were mostly quite small single digit percent though, on an Intel CPU.

Notes: Canonical (Ubuntu) is my employer, I am not working on this project.

CoastalCoder• 2 years ago

This is what bothers me about the characterizations of CPU architecture in ELF files and (IIRC) Python eggs...

They're so vague about which particular x86 ISA variants are compatible with the binaries.

So, e.g., a program loader doesn't necessarily verify that the binary will work on the CPU.

Or, as we see with Linux distros, they build packages for the lowest common denominator ISA.

(Note: it's been a while since I dealt with this, so I might be remembering a bit wrong.)

Lockal2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't write it all off on the AVX-512 in this case. As you can see in https://github.com/clearlinux-pkgs/php and other clearlinux repositories, the difference from other distros is:

1) a number of backported optimization patches

2) few patches in Linux kernel and glibc that were not accepted to upstream

3) and maybe the most important part: PGO for python, php and other performance-critical components. It is a well-known fact that PGO helps interpreted languages. And it is benchmark-oriented: for example, even though PGO helps bash, they don't enable it (maybe until somebody invents bash-bench).

jmakov• 2 years ago

Any benefits if you compile your own code base?

Havoc• 2 years ago

The per OS divergence on benchmarks on these chips seem weird.

I've seen multiple of the usual YT suspects comment on it, but haven't seen someone clearly articulate wth is going.

autoexecbat• 2 years ago

It's the compilers.

Clear Linux makes use of compiler function multi versioning, performance-minded defaults, aggressive compiler CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS defaults, optional AVX-512 usage for more libraries, and many other patches and optimizations in the name of delivering the greatest x86_64 Linux performance.

bravetraveler• 2 years ago

They even go so far as to encourage filesystem journaling to happen less rigorously. A lot of interesting patches in their repo.

Good for fanciful numbers, perhaps not some work or scenarios

crest• 2 years ago

Compiling a few dozen important libraries with a higher x86_64 instruction version unlocking AVX2 or even AVX-512 by default can make a large difference. Normally these optimisations aren't used by distro packages because the libraries aren't written in such a way that one binary runs as fast as possible on new CPUs and still runs at all on older CPUs. Instead processes just crash with an illegal instruction exception (aka SIGILL). The tooling exists to allow such libraries and executables to be created and have the runtime linker pick the right implementation at link time, but support for it is spotty.

rightbyte• 2 years ago

The tooling exists to allow such libraries and executables to be created and have the runtime linker pick the right implementation at link time, but support for it is spotty.

Attribute target_clones works quite well with gcc in my experience, but it is done all by hand for worthwhile functions and should interfere with inlining and short jumps.

abhinavk• 2 years ago

In addition to what other commenters said, Clear Linux goes all the way but you can get somewhat there with CachyOS. It's Arch with compiler optimizations and targets CPUs with AVX2 and newer.

jcalvinowens• 2 years ago

I'd love to see how Gentoo sustem built with -march=native looks on those benchmarks. I'd guess it would perform better.

blibble• 2 years ago

sounds like -funroll-loops is back

Intel Clear Linux: 16% more Ryzen 9 9950X performance

Related Stories