Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" Linux Benchmarks

First up some of the most frequently sought after benchmarks: code compilation performance... Kicking things off with building a default Linux x86_64 kernel, the Xeon 6980P 2P sets a new record for kernel build times... A mere 23 seconds to compile the Linux 6.8 kernel! This shaved off several seconds compared to Emerald Rapids and extended the lead over AMD EPYC Genoa(X).

The benefits of Granite Rapids is even more pronounced when building the Linux kernel with all supported kernel modules... Shaving off 44 seconds from the build time of the previously-leading Xeon 6780E 2P Sierra Forest server. Quite dramatic gains for compiling large codebases on Granite Rapids.

It depends upon the size of the codebase for whether 128 or 256 cores can effectively scale. For those dealing with smaller codebases it can be more beneficial compiling multiple projects simultaneously to better saturate the system. In any event the Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids was delivering nice gains over Emerald Rapids and speedy competition to AMD EPYC.

It will also be interesting to look at the MRDIMM vs. DDR5-6400 performance here to see how much the system memory bandwidth played a role in helping the build speeds.