Intel Xeon Max / Sapphire Rapids Riding Higher On Ubuntu 23.10

While Ubuntu 23.10 isn't a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, for those curious about the evolution of Ubuntu Linux performance for Intel Xeon Max (Sapphire Rapids with HBM2e) on this new release just six months out from the all-important Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, here are some benchmarks showing the dual Intel Xeon Max 9480 performance on a Supermicro X13DEM platform while comparing Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS, Ubuntu 23.04, and the brand new Ubuntu 23.10.

We've been seeing nice performance uplift on Ubuntu 23.10 both for AMD and Intel x86_64 platforms. In today's article is a look at the flagship Intel Xeon Max 9480 performance across the Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS release, the prior Ubuntu 23.04 release, and Ubuntu 23.10 that debuted last week.

The Supermicro Hyper SuperServer SYS-221H-TNR with X13DEM motherboard was used for all these dual socket Xeon Max 9480 processors. All three Ubuntu Linux releases were freshly installed and benchmarked in their out-of-the-box state for seeing how the Sapphire Rapids / Xeon Max performance is looking for this interim Ubuntu Linux release ahead of the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS cycle.

For those just after the immediate data... Yes, Ubuntu 23.10 is a very nice upgrade for the Intel Xeon Max processors. Going from Ubuntu 23.04 to Ubuntu 23.10 meant a 10% boost to the performance using the geometric mean of 88 benchmarks conducted for this article. Or compared to the current Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, moving to Ubuntu 23.10 meant 15% higher performance.

Driving Ubuntu 23.10 higher on this Intel Sapphire Rapids server is the Linux 6.5 kernel with many nice improvements compared to Linux 6.2 found in Ubuntu 23.04 and back-ported to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS as a hardware enablement (HWE) kernel. Moving from GCC 12.3 to GCC 13.2 is another big upgrade for the source-based benchmarks with the new Ubuntu release. Plus there are numerous other updated software packages found with Ubuntu 23.10 that are delivering very nice x86_64 performance improvements.