Intel Xeon Max Enjoying Some Performance Gains With Linux 6.6

In addition to Linux 6.6 delivering better results on AMD EPYC servers, Intel Xeon Max / Sapphire Rapids is also picking up some performance wins on this forthcoming version of the Linux kernel. Here are some comparison benchmarks looking at the Intel Xeon Max 9480 2S performance between Linux 6.5 stable and the upcoming Linux 6.6 kernel.

This article offers a straight-forward look at how Linux 6.5 stable compares to a recent Linux 6.6 Git state for the performance differences when running two Intel Xeon Max 9480 processors (Sapphire Rapids with HBM2e) in caching mode on a Supermicro X13DEM platform.

All of the hardware was kept the same as always during testing and just switching out the kernel version in use. For easy reproducibility the Linux kernel images were obtained via the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA.

Overall there are a number of minor improvements for the Intel Sapphire Rapids performance on Linux 6.6. This new kernel brings the EEVDF scheduler and other enhancements. The gains tended to not be as significant though as on the AMD EPYC side where Linux 6.6 also has some new optimizations for benefiting chiplet CPUs and other AMD-focused enhancements. In any case Linux 6.6 is continuing to look quite good for both AMD and Intel platforms.