AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Benchmarks On 11 Linux Distributions

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Benchmarks On 11 Linux Distributions

Now that BIOS updates over the past month have resolved the early boot issue with Ryzen 3000 processors and thus the new AMD CPUs playing nicely with modern Linux distributions, here is the long-awaited benchmark comparison of the Ryzen 9 3900X + X570 system benchmarked across an array of different Linux distributions... In fact, 11 Linux OS releases in total were tested on this high-end 12-core / 24-thread desktop processor.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=28224

[CochainComplex]

As fas as I know, most benefits in Clear Linux come from using GCC's Function Multi-Versioning, not from specific march/mtune :
https://docs.01.org/clearlinux/lates...rials/fmv.html

This is effectively having binaries containing multiple versions of functions, optimized to target different arch

I do no see what would prevent a distro using that. No need to deprecate ancient platforms, but at least the new ones are able to use their news instructions. Else what's the point of buying Intel/AMD cpus with avx2?

true it is like puting a turbo in your car but not using it because it might cause additional troubles.

[geearf]

As fas as I know, most benefits in Clear Linux come from using GCC's Function Multi-Versioning, not from specific march/mtune :
https://docs.01.org/clearlinux/lates...rials/fmv.html

This is effectively having binaries containing multiple versions of functions, optimized to target different arch

I do no see what would prevent a distro using that. No need to deprecated ancient platforms, but at least the new ones are able to use their news instructions. Else what's the point of buying Intel/AMD cpus with avx2?

Yeah distros should probably do that for a few important packages, like libc.
Also since many distros dropped x86, maybe they could split AMD64 into 2, old and new, though that might be too much work.

[sheepdestroyer]

Since Clear Linux do --with-arch=westmere and --with-tune=haswell and else do just --with-tune=generic

Just to give you an idea, the mtune= used in Clear Linux points to the Skylake architecture. This gives you an idea of why this doesn't happen.

As fas as I know, most benefits in Clear Linux come from using GCC's Function Multi-Versioning, not from specific march/mtune :
https://docs.01.org/clearlinux/lates...rials/fmv.html

This is effectively having binaries containing multiple versions of functions, optimized to target different arch

I do no see what would prevent a distro using that. No need to deprecate ancient platforms, but at least the new ones are able to use their news instructions. Else what's the point of buying Intel/AMD cpus with avx2?

[alcalde]

Just to give you an idea, the mtune= used in Clear Linux points to the Skylake architecture. This gives you an idea of why this doesn't happen.

Then why don't other distros gain the ability to recompile all your software after first install and turn the system super-speedy?

[CochainComplex]

tell me, and I add the magic to #t2sde in a snap. Nice when big companies do not clearly publish their open source modifications and tricks, right, ..? Or do they?

Intel clear linux is not using any magic. They just make use of modern compiler (usually they pickup the latest stable gcc quite early) with additional compilerflags suiting more recent cpus archs. They have multiversioning implementend especially if the cpu has to be destinguished by avx, avx2 and avx512. In addition to this they also build specified libs or build toolchains if e.g. avx512 is supported.Sometimes they also patch the software with avx implementations. Dont know if this is put upstream - dont know if package maintainer might like it if it is too arch specific.
They always show the secret souce. If you want to make use of some of their optimizations just look into their build script of a particular package.

I did that couple of times for e.g. ocatve but im running on ubuntu 18.04. The improvements are significant.
To be fair im usually more an amd buddy but what intel is doing with clear linux is really good also from the open source point of view. Proof is this benchmark ...even amd is gaining performance with it.

Btw AFAIK Solus also picked some of their patches.

[jones13]

I'm surprised how the rolling release Manjaro/Arch is behind in these. It seems there's something wrong with how they build their packages. Doesn't make sense for newer to be slower in pretty much all tests.

Maybe because Arch/Manjaro use 'schedutil' as CPU governor? I was surprised as I tought 'ondemand' is default for AMD CPUs (according to the Arch Wiki).

Schedutil is slower than ondemand:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...overnors&num=1

Which governor is used by the others distros?

[rene]

What kind of magic does clear linux use and why not any other distro uses it???

tell me, and I add the magic to #t2sde in a snap. Nice when big companies do not clearly publish their open source modifications and tricks, right, ..? Or do they?

[Mario Junior]

So, when will IBM/RedHat/Fedora finally get their act together and start implementing Clear Linux's optimizations? Don't they have the necessary ressources?

It's not like it was not all opensource. Clear Linux's devs have documented their work and written blog posts about it.

Just to give you an idea, the mtune= used in Clear Linux points to the Skylake architecture. This gives you an idea of why this doesn't happen.

[sheepdestroyer]

So, when will IBM/RedHat/Fedora finally get their act together and start implementing Clear Linux's optimizations? Don't they have the necessary ressources?

It's not like it was not all opensource. Clear Linux's devs have documented their work and written blog posts about it.


EDIT : I specifically think about FMV, not brainless march/mtune tuning...