Ubuntu 24.04 LTS To Help Further Boost AMD EPYC 9004 Series Performance

Written by Michael Larabel in AMD on 12 March 2024 at 12:22 PM EDT. 1 Comment

With the upgraded Linux kernel, compiler, and other software upgrades with next month's Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, those using recent AMD EPYC server processors like the 4th Gen EPYC Genoa(X) / Bergamo / Siena processors stand to benefit from greater performance over the current Ubuntu 22.04 LTS release.

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is using the new Linux 6.8 kernel, the GCC 13 compiler as a big upgrade over GCC 11 especially with "-march=znver4" support and the like for those on the latest Zen 4 based AMD processors, and plenty of other enticing software upgrades like Python 3.12 replacing Python 3.10. So as with most Ubuntu Long-Term Support releases given the two year duration of software improvements, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is looking quite nice for those on recent AMD (and Intel and ARM) platforms.

AMD EPYC 9684X

Last week I ran a number of early benchmarks looking at Intel Xeon Emerald Rapids with Ubuntu 24.04 while following that I ran similar tests on the AMD EPYC 4th Gen side too. For both AMD and Intel, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is looking quite nice.

Ubuntu 24.04 AMD EPYC Genoa-X Benchmark Preview

I ran some benchmarks on an AMD EPYC 9684X 2P (Genoa-X) server of Ubuntu 22.04 both with its stock Linux 5.15 kernel and then the Linux 6.5 HWE kernel, Ubuntu 23.10, and then Ubuntu 24.04 in its current feature-frozen, near-final state ahead of its stable debut in late April.

NAS Parallel Benchmarks benchmark with settings of Test / Class: EP.D. Ubuntu 24.04 8 March was the fastest.

Quicksilver benchmark with settings of Input: CORAL2 P2. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS + Linux 6.5 HWE was the fastest.

7-Zip Compression benchmark with settings of Test: Compression Rating. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS was the fastest.

OSPRay Studio benchmark with settings of Camera: 3, Resolution: 4K, Samples Per Pixel: 32, Renderer: Path Tracer, Acceleration: CPU. Ubuntu 23.10 was the fastest.

While in some areas there weren't any performance changes, in other areas Ubuntu 24.04 is nice for an incremental improvement with the already-fast AMD EPYC Genoa(X) server processors.

ClickHouse benchmark with settings of 100M Rows Hits Dataset, First Run / Cold Cache. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS was the fastest.

In some cases slightly slower either due to the increased security mitigations with newer CPU microcode and the like or other factors.

CockroachDB benchmark with settings of Workload: KV, 50% Reads, Concurrency: 512. Ubuntu 24.04 8 March was the fastest.

Memcached benchmark with settings of Set To Get Ratio: 1:10. Ubuntu 24.04 8 March was the fastest.

Memcached benchmark with settings of Set To Get Ratio: 1:100. Ubuntu 24.04 8 March was the fastest.

But overall Ubuntu 24.04 was looking to be in good shape for AMD EPYC and further maximizing the performance potential of the flagship EPYC 9684X processors.

Graph500 benchmark with settings of Scale: 26. Ubuntu 24.04 8 March was the fastest.

nginx benchmark with settings of Connections: 500. Ubuntu 24.04 8 March was the fastest.

Ubuntu 24.04 continues looking quite good across my early AMD/Intel server testing so far. More mobile and desktop testing of Ubuntu 24.04 to come as this Long-Term Support release approaches next month.

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