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

[phoronix]

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

While we have already compared the Threadripper 1950X to the current top-end Core i9 7900X processor, today we are taking things a step further with our Threadripper Linux benchmarks by doing a side-by-side showdown when each system is tested across three different Linux distributions.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=25170

[Zan Lynx]

Clear Linux is obviously doing something very, very right. Now I want to know what it is and why everyone isn't doing it.

[Degra]

Clear Linux is obviously doing something very, very right. Now I want to know what it is and why everyone isn't doing it.

Only targeting more recent hardware (Intel Core-i 4xxx and newer) helps with your choices of compiler flags you can set.
Clear Linux has got their packages from bottom to top optimized for performance, mostly thanks to compiler flags.

Solus is doing a similar thing, although not quite as aggressively, because they want to target a wider audience and don't want to lose people unable to use their binaries by lacking the CPU features the compiler flags require.
To my knowledge, Ikey initiated the Solus project and was one of the employees working on Clear Linux at Intel until a few months ago.

[arjan_intel]

Only targeting more recent hardware (Intel Core-i 4xxx and newer) helps with your choices of compiler flags you can set.
Clear Linux has got their packages from bottom to top optimized for performance, mostly thanks to compiler flags.

Solus is doing a similar thing, although not quite as aggressively, because they want to target a wider audience and don't want to lose people unable to use their binaries by lacking the CPU features the compiler flags require.
To my knowledge, Ikey initiated the Solus project and was one of the employees working on Clear Linux at Intel until a few months ago.

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

[franglais125]

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

Is there a roadmap/timeline to update the threshold?

Say, next year the cutoff is at 2011 CPUs, etc.

[eva2000]

Only targeting more recent hardware (Intel Core-i 4xxx and newer) helps with your choices of compiler flags you can set.

+1 definitely, I remember years back when benchmarking MariaDB 5.2.x MySQL building custom RPMs optimised for Intel cpus was giving upto 50% for some work loads over generic compiler options in default MariaDB 5.2 provided RPMs ! Yes I am a CentOS/RPM side guy. Would love to see Linux distros offer standard packages + side package options for those interested in living on the edge for more optimised compiler option based distro packages.

[tiwake]

I guess the other question would be gentoo with mach=native
One of the reasons why I would get such a system is because they are compiling monsters.

(have yet to run gentoo... I'm not man enough.. maybe when I get a threadripper desktop sometime next year or something)

[arjan_intel]

Is there a roadmap/timeline to update the threshold?

Say, next year the cutoff is at 2011 CPUs, etc.

it's really really painful to change this bar (it breaks users) so there currently are no plans to change

[chuckula]

Thank you Intel for contributing a solid cross-platform distro to the community. Once again showing that if it weren't for Intel's open-source Linux contributions Threadripper couldn't even boot to a login prompt much less do anything useful.

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.

[bridgman]

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.

Have you tried running an Intel CPU without AMD's 64-bit Linux contributions ? How's that working out for you ?