Core i9 7900X vs. Threadripper 1950X On Ubuntu 17.10, Antergos, Clear Linux

[sdack]

I'd like to have seen how Debian would have compared here, seeing how well it did last time around.

The distros need to wake up and pick up the pace, seeing how Intel with it's Clear Linux is dominating in performance.

[b8e5n]

I still don't get why distros don't create separate packages for each CPU generation and let the package manager fetch the best one for your hardware

I agree, though it would make the storage explode... I would be more in favor for client-side compilation to optimise for the user's cpu generation and usable flags.

[FireBurn]

I still don't get why distros don't create separate packages for each CPU generation and let the package manager fetch the best one for your hardware

[Azrael5]

Actually the test show that clearlinux is the best linux operating system.

[geearf]

This is probably not what you want to hear, but: It squarely depends on your use case.

Well since I'm not hearing it, but reading it, it's fine

To answer the question which packages matter most, you need to analyze and profile the things which are performance critical to you. For example, if you do lots of media encoding, then ffmpeg would be a good candidate. Or imagemagick/graphicsmagick if you process a lot of pictures. Here is a report from a G'MIC user who saw huge performance gain from recompiling this particular application with optimized compiler flags.

Or if your code spends lots of time in libc (calling math functions) or in kernel space then look at optimizing those.

I do usually recompile ffmpeg, but to add support for fdk_aac; you make me wonder if I should change my flags for it.
I tried once with o3 but got many issues with the reencoded stuff and never tried again.

But yeah globally you make a good point.
I was more thinking of whatever app you use + whatever core stuff needs it. Like I don't think the kernel would change a lot based on grayski's benchmarks, but maybe glibc as you mentioned or something else...

[chithanh]

he can compile his custom kernel and other system critical things with those flags on any distribution, it would still take more time, but far less than doing Gentoo.

If you want to run the Linux kernel with CPU-specific optimizations, you need additional patches (cf. https://github.com/graysky2/kernel_gcc_patch, integrated into the Gentoo kernel package already - dunno about Clear Linux, maybe arjan_intel can comment).

While performance can be among the reasons why people run Gentoo, it is typically not the main reason. It is rather having more choice than a binary distro can give you, and having compiler optimized packages for your CPU is a free benefit from that.

Do you guys have an idea of which packages matter the most in terms of compilation optimizations?
Maybe it's the whole OS, but I'm wondering if one could not recompile certain key packages to get about the same performance gain without having to go all source like gentoo.

This is probably not what you want to hear, but: It squarely depends on your use case.

To answer the question which packages matter most, you need to analyze and profile the things which are performance critical to you. For example, if you do lots of media encoding, then ffmpeg would be a good candidate. Or imagemagick/graphicsmagick if you process a lot of pictures. Here is a report from a G'MIC user who saw huge performance gain from recompiling this particular application with optimized compiler flags.

Or if your code spends lots of time in libc (calling math functions) or in kernel space then look at optimizing those.

[AndyChow]

DAMN these chips are getting big!!! I bet one day they will be the size of a Rubik's cube, since they are all becoming multi-silicon packages interposed and stacked.

[geearf]

Clear Linux runs on Atom as well, baseline is "Westmere" (2010 CPU, pre-AVX)

Do you guys have an idea of which packages matter the most in terms of compilation optimizations?
Maybe it's the whole OS, but I'm wondering if one could not recompile certain key packages to get about the same performance gain without having to go all source like gentoo.

[leipero]

chithanh In that case he doesn't really need to waste time on Gentoo, he can compile his custom kernel and other system critical things with those flags on any distribution, it would still take more time, but far less than doing Gentoo. That comes from the person who never even tried Gentoo, so my understanding of that OS is that everything needs to be compiled, correct me of I'm wrong.

[DanL]

It would be nice if AMD at any point in the history of the company had made a contribution to open source that extended past getting its own hardware to run.

Dude, your 400+ posts boil down to, "I'm an Intel fanboy." How about you contribute something other than that to Phoronix?