Benchmarks Of OpenMandriva's AMD Zen Optimized Linux Distribution Against Ubuntu, openSUSE, Clear Linux

[Wandinstallation]

Hey Michael! Thanks a lot for including cp2k!

[andrei_me]

Michael AWESOME RESULT OVERVIEW GRAPH OMFG!!!!

One suggestion for that graph would be trim the vertical padding a little bit, in my low res laptop (1366 × 768) it is a bit hard to read, something like this:

https://imgur.com/a/2RhyMJd

[berolinux]

It would be nice to see the benchmarks repeated with identical scaling governor settings etc. on all systems being compared.
This is a tradeoff -- OpenMandriva goes with conservative by default to save power (should help with battery life on laptops, such as the Ryzen based Acer Predator Helios 500 several OpenMandriva guys are using to work on the znver1 builds). Clear Linux wants to be the fastest thing there is, without paying much attention to energy use. OpenSUSE uses ondemand which seems to be more of a middle ground.

Also, memory use and diskspace isn't being considered -- Clear Linux again tries to be fast more than anything else, they build with -O3.
OpenMandriva tries to save some resources and uses -O3 for packages that are very important for speed, while using -Os (designed to save space at the cost of some performance) for packages that spend most time waiting for user input. Users with lower end systems will likely be happy with this choice.

I'm not sure why the GIMP numbers look pretty bad -- maybe GIMP doesn't like being built with clang too much, but another thing that might play into it is that OpenMandriva is Qt centric and does things to make GTK applications integrate with Qt environments that may be suboptimal in benchmarks (using Qt styles in GTK, for example). Not sure to what extent the GIMP benchmarks would be affected by the GTK-Qt theme engine.
There's a good chance OpenMandriva would look much better in a Krita benchmark compared to a GTK centric distribution that tries to GTKify Krita with QGtkStyle.

Of course there's more optimizations coming in 4.1...

[k1e0x]

I was under the understanding that not very much (depending on the version) of znver1 was different from generic x86_64 and that it was mostly a future stub flag. Clearly a lot of work and understanding of optimizing for ZEN still can be done.

"AMD how you doing over there... would you like to help make your processors go fast?"

[artivision]

Is the Arch Clear Kernel enough to get extra performance in-game or Mesa needs to be also a clear build?

[betam4x]

I was under the understanding that not very much (depending on the version) of znver1 was different from generic x86_64 and that it was mostly a future stub flag. Clearly a lot of work and understanding of optimizing for ZEN still can be done.

"AMD how you doing over there... would you like to help make your processors go fast?"

Some optimization work has been done, but not a lot. It's pointless anyway. AMD has an entirely new architecture for Zen 2. Zen 1 runs 'well enough' under generic settings. Unlike Intel, AMD has entire architectural changes from here forward, so they can't afford to spend the time/resources on minor optimizations for each CPU release. If EPYC "Rome" sees the adoption rate AMD proclaims, we may see Zen2 optimizations (due to server workloads). Otherwise don't expect much.

[duby229]

Actually the real truth is that Zen performs better when using Broadwell optimizations.

ENTIRELY speculation....
I honestly believe Intel donated a Broadwell based architecture to AMD shortly after AMD launched Bulldozer derived architectures. AMD then rebased it and redeveloped it into what Zen is. I think Intel realizes they need AMD to continue to exist at some level, either due to contractual obligations or due to legal obligations, but in any case the end results are the same, Zen is very similar to Broadwell and it performs better with Broadwell compiler tuning.

[k1e0x]

Actually the real truth is that Zen performs better when using Broadwell optimizations.

ENTIRELY speculation....
I honestly believe Intel donated a Broadwell based architecture to AMD shortly after AMD launched Bulldozer derived architectures. AMD then rebased it and redeveloped it into what Zen is. I think Intel realizes they need AMD to continue to exist at some level, either due to contractual obligations or due to legal obligations, but in any case the end results are the same, Zen is very similar to Broadwell and it performs better with Broadwell compiler tuning.

This idea/rumor was floating around the Gentoo camp for a while. I tend to find this skeptical with Intel's knee jerk reactions to Zen. Zen is the work of Jim Keller the lead architect behind the Athlon64 chip. He left AMD in 1999 and returned to create Zen.

Intel has publicly bashed the design but.. if you think of the limits we face with moore's law it may be rather smart to extend CPU performance sideways by adding core count and threading to processes. In a way AMD did the only thing they could and it was a win.

[duby229]

This idea/rumor was floating around the Gentoo camp for a while. I tend to find this skeptical with Intel's knee jerk reactions to Zen. Zen is the work of Jim Keller the lead architect behind the Athlon64 chip. He left AMD in 1999 and returned to create Zen.

Intel has publicly bashed the design but.. if you think of the limits we face with moore's law it may be rather smart to extend CPU performance sideways by adding core count and threading to processes. In a way AMD did the only thing they could and it was a win.

I can't understand how Jim Keller gets so much credit for K8, thye real truth is Fred Weber designed K7 and was the lead architect for K8. Jim keller was there, but Fred Weber was the dude....

EDIT: Please don't forget about Nexgen's K6, which is -exactly- what K7 derived from. That's all -Fred Weber-.... No doubt Jim Kellerdid something to improve K8, but he didn't design it, he already had a complete architecture to work with. No doubt he also had a complete architecture to work with when he started Zen....

[wizard69]

Actually the real truth is that Zen performs better when using Broadwell optimizations.

So? I mean really that doesn’t imply anything special.

ENTIRELY speculation....
I honestly believe Intel donated a Broadwell based architecture to AMD shortly after AMD launched Bulldozer derived architectures.

I can’t see this happening under any circumstance.

AMD then rebased it and redeveloped it into what Zen is. I think Intel realizes they need AMD to continue to exist at some level, either due to contractual obligations or due to legal obligations, but in any case the end results are the same, Zen is very similar to Broadwell and it performs better with Broadwell compiler tuning.

Well it has been awhile since looking at the chip architectures but last I remember there is very little similarity here. Frankly I see a lot of innovation that went into ZEN.