Some Ryzen Linux Users Are Facing Issues With Heavy Compilation Loads

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Some Ryzen Linux Users Are Facing Issues With Heavy Compilation Loads

I haven't encountered this issue myself on any of my Ryzen Linux boxes, but it seems there are a number of Ryzen Linux users who are facing segmentation faults and sometimes crashes when running concurrent compilation loads on these Zen CPUs...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Compiler-Issues

[sdack]

This is sad news. AMD already had issues when they had launched the long awaited Phenom 9850 in the past, only for user to find out that it's TLB had a bug and required a fix, which ultimately cost the CPU roughly 2%-3% in performance (if I remember this correctly). I hope this finds a fix and one without it losing any of its performance.

[Guest]

Sounds more like a bug in GCC Ryzen code?

[chuckula]

Sounds more like a bug in GCC Ryzen code?

That's not how this works.
There's no "GCC RyZen code" there's just GCC that may (or may not) be doing RyZen optimizations.
Or it could be cross-compiling for an ARM device... it's still GCC.

[chuckula]

Have they maybe been able to narrow down the platforms that are or aren't affected? RyZen's launch was plagued by quite a bit of flakiness because the chips came out before the platform was 100% baked. Maybe some motherboards are OK and others are having problems.

Additionally -- and I have to say this because it happens -- please don't tell me these guys are running some overclocked-to-the-edge setup and are getting shocked by segfaults.

[Naib]

Thats my google docs (generated from a google form that is also posted in those threads)

Gcc-6.3 might be suspect as well as RAM timing. There has been another gentoo developer that posted issues with gcc-6.x

[Holograph]

I wonder about RAM too, considering that at first you could only get the RAM to run at like 300 kilohertz (slight exaggeration there).

Maybe people are buying DDR4-3200 kits and thinking they can actually use that speed.

I'm not sure, though. Just a complete guess.

In any case, compiling software is one of the main reasons I was thinking about upgrading to Ryzen.

[doragasu]

Overheat problem? Segfaults and random freezes under heavy load have always been typical problems that appear on non properly cooled CPUs. Maybe these chips require better cooling than expected.

[chuckula]

Thats my google docs (generated from a google form that is also posted in those threads)

Gcc-6.3 might be suspect as well as RAM timing. There has been another gentoo developer that posted issues with gcc-6.x

The posts seem to indicate that the crashes were non-deterministic. I know it's not practical for long-term use, but did you try just running 1 GCC process to see if that avoids the crashes?

[ernstp]

It's just unstable overclocking...