Blender 4.1 Will Further Expand Linux's CPU Rendering Performance Lead Over Windows

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Blender 4.1 Will Further Expand Linux's CPU Rendering Performance Lead Over Windows

When running Windows vs. Linux performance benchmarks one of the real-world areas where Linux consistently dominates across both AMD and Intel platforms is for the Blender 3D modeling software's rendering performance. For CPU-based rendering in Blender as well as other 3D modeling software, Linux typically dominates by wide margins. With the upcoming Blender 4.1 release, it looks like Linux's lead will only further expand...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Blender-4.1-Faster-CPU-Linux

[c117152]

> Linux CPU rendering performance was improved by about 5% across benchmarks

I'm guessing they changed something about the memory allocation or threading under Linux and it wasn't the soft rendering that got faster but CPU overhead was reduced by 5% when doing the usual (GPU) rendering.
Otherwise, I can't imagine why would some algorithmic or code path improvement wouldn't apply to both windows and linux.

[milkylainen]

Otherwise, I can't imagine why would some algorithmic or code path improvement wouldn't apply to both windows and linux.

Did you bother with reading the actual article?
I mean. It's literally a couple of lines long..

[schmidtbag]

Did you bother with reading the actual article?
I mean. It's literally a couple of lines long..

As someone who read the article, I too don't see what makes Windows incompatible with this change. jemalloc huge pages are the only thing mentioned, which as far as I'm aware are not incompatible with Windows (Firefox uses jemalloc in Windows, for example). Perhaps the Windows version of Blender doesn't involve jemalloc, but that's not obvious.

Reading the pull request doesn't make it any more obvious, in my opinion:

https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/116663

[Volta]

As someone who read the article, I too don't see what makes Windows incompatible with this change.

Maybe it's sometimes compatible, but Linux implementation of huge pages is years ahead of Windows and competition.

[milkylainen]

As someone who read the article, I too don't see what makes Windows incompatible with this change.
https://projects.blender.org/blender...r/pulls/116663

The statement was that the author implicitly (and correctly) assumed that it was the memory subsystem.
And I answered that there was no need to guess. The answer is found in the article.
I didn't try to elaborate why Windows couldn't do the same.

But since we're there now, my best guess is that the Windows memory subsystem is also capable of hugepage handling.
Maybe the Windows variant is a total can of worms, as one should know that Linux with hugepages is definitely not without caveats and very strange behavior at times.
So, another totally uneducated guess.

[JEBjames]

Michael

typo

"When running Windows vs. Linux performance benchmarks one of the real-world areas where Linux consistently dominates across both AMD and Intel platforms is for the Blender 3D modeling software's rendering performance" maybe remove "for the"

[Kjell]

Linux superiority

[sophisticles]

I guess once again I need to be the voice of reason.

Let's assume that Windows sucks and Linux is great, then what is the excuse why this improvement can't be included in the Mac version of Blender?

The reason why this change only seems to apply to the Linux version is because that's the way the developers want it. Blender is GPL, Linux is GPL and Windows and Mac are not..

The developers want to keep propagating the myth of Linux superiority so they concentrate their efforts on the Linux version.

That is fine because in the grand scheme no one cares.

Movies made with Blender:

Spring, Alike, I Lost My Body, Next-Gen, The Missing Scarf, Hero, Agent 327, Darrel, LightHouse, Cosmos Laundromat, Tears of Steel, a few more, you can see them here:

https://studio.blender.org/films/

Not bad, nothing you will be seeing on the big screen or that generates any cash, but not bad.

Movies made with Cinema4D:

Spiderman 3, Ironman 3, Pacific Rim, Doom, The Girl with the Drogan Tattoo, the list goes on and on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_4D

Movies made with Modo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modo_(software)#:~:text=Modo%20was%20used%20in%20t he,Man%2C%20and%20Wall%2DE.

Movies made with Maya:

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls068256477/

That's really Blender's legacy, it is used to create pet projects that do not generate a dime, in the case of Alike it took an animation student 5 years to create a short film.

The commercial products are used to create movies that collectively have generated billions of dollars worldwide and directly and indirectly led to the employment of tens of thousands of people.

So well done Blender team.

[Svyatko]

I guess once again I need to be the voice of reason.

Let's assume that Windows sucks and Linux is great, then what is the excuse why this improvement can't be included in the Mac version of Blender?

The reason why this change only seems to apply to the Linux version is because that's the way the developers want it. Blender is GPL, Linux is GPL and Windows and Mac are not..

The developers want to keep propagating the myth of Linux superiority so they concentrate their efforts on the Linux version.

That is fine because in the grand scheme no one cares.

Movies made with Blender:

Spring, Alike, I Lost My Body, Next-Gen, The Missing Scarf, Hero, Agent 327, Darrel, LightHouse, Cosmos Laundromat, Tears of Steel, a few more, you can see them here:

https://studio.blender.org/films/

Not bad, nothing you will be seeing on the big screen or that generates any cash, but not bad.

Movies made with Cinema4D:

Spiderman 3, Ironman 3, Pacific Rim, Doom, The Girl with the Drogan Tattoo, the list goes on and on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_4D

Movies made with Modo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modo_(software)#:~:text=Modo%20was%20used%20in%20t he,Man%2C%20and%20Wall%2DE.

Movies made with Maya:

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls068256477/

That's really Blender's legacy, it is used to create pet projects that do not generate a dime, in the case of Alike it took an animation student 5 years to create a short film.

The commercial products are used to create movies that collectively have generated billions of dollars worldwide and directly and indirectly led to the employment of tens of thousands of people.

So well done Blender team.

Right now huge pages are supported by compilers for x86-64, and not for ARM.