AMD EPYC Performance Over The Past Six Years Of Ubuntu Linux LTS Releases

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD EPYC Performance Over The Past Six Years Of Ubuntu Linux LTS Releases

As part of my many different benchmarks being carried out due to the new Ubuntu 22.04 LTS "Jammy Jellyfish" release, I was curious to do a broader Linux server performance look over the past several long-term support releases of Ubuntu Linux. For making this happen I used an AMD EPYC 7601 2P as the original EPYC "Naples" server platform that can go as far back as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS for software compatibility and then seeing how it has evolved with the 18.04, 20.04, and now 22.04 operating system updates.

https://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=31084

[kylew77]

This is fascinating! It is amazing how little improvements 22.04 made, but on the other hand 20.04 isn't running with the kernel that shipped with it, it is running with the HWE kernel so it is not too far behind 22.04 in kernel version. Would love to see a CentOS 6, 7, 8 comparison, or RHEL 6, 7, 8 comparison.

[kylew77]

I thought I would come back and say good job Michael, you do great work in these benchmarks and I for one find them helpful. Supporting you by going Premium was one of the best decisions I ever made!

[schmidtbag]

I'm sure anyone who bought one of these CPUs in 2017 must be real happy knowing that they basically got a free CPU upgrade after all these kernel updates. Those are some serious performance gains.

[Linuxxx]

Michael

Why isn't the overview table showing which CPU governor was used on any of the different Ubuntu versions?

It would have been quite useful to know which one was running with "ondemand" & at which point "schedutil" became the default...

[coder]

Michael , thanks for the tests, but I'm somewhat dismayed by the lack of improvements shown by 5.18, in spite of the NUMA optimization you've been reporting on. Is it included in that Git snapshot, or not yet merged?

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...5.18-Scheduler

The 7001-series EPYC should be the perfect CPU for showcasing its benefits.

[Michael]

Michael

Why isn't the overview table showing which CPU governor was used on any of the different Ubuntu versions?

It would have been quite useful to know which one was running with "ondemand" & at which point "schedutil" became the default...

Because the driver doesn't load when it's platform managed like with this Dell PowerEdge server.

[Michael]

Michael , thanks for the tests, but I'm somewhat dismayed by the lack of improvements shown by 5.18, in spite of the NUMA optimization you've been reporting on. Is it included in that Git snapshot, or not yet merged?

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...5.18-Scheduler

The 7001-series EPYC should be the perfect CPU for showcasing its benefits.

It was merged already for 5.18. Haven't looked into its impact for Zen 1 but given these results likely not of much use or more narrow.

[coder]

It was merged already for 5.18. Haven't looked into its impact for Zen 1 but given these results likely not of much use or more narrow.

That seems very strange, unless the new NUMA patch was only targeted at optimizing CPUs with more subtle NUMA domains/divisions than first-gen EPYC had.