8-Way Linux Distribution Benchmarks On The AMD EPYC 7742 2P Server

A few days ago I provided some benchmarks showing how running Intel's open-source Clear Linux on AMD EPYC Rome can provide some significant speed-ups over Ubuntu Linux, but how do other Linux distributions compare on AMD's new Zen 2 server processors? Here is an eight-way benchmark comparison on the AMD EPYC 7742 2P Daytona server with its 128 cores / 256 threads.

The dual AMD EPYC 7742 server was equipped with 512GB of RAM and using an Intel Optane 900p NVMe solid-state drive for storage throughout. The tested Linux distributions were Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS, Ubuntu 19.04, Ubuntu 19.10 daily (4 September 2019), openSUSE Leap 15.1 derived from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP1, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0, Fedora 30, Clear Linux 30940, and Debian 10.0.

All eight Linux distribution installations were cleanly installed each time and left at their default/out-of-the-box configuration for a representative initial/clean experience on each platform. Via the Phoronix Test Suite a wide range of tests were carried out.