All:

I have a number of dedicated crunchers and I am always looking to expand my farm. I recently purchase a server with 4 AMD Opteron 6172 processors with 48 total cores. I also have an old Atom powered laptop and several intel i5 and i7 devices. In a dedicated environment, I have some estimated performance levels. Can anyone add to this list?

RAC per Core:
Intel ATOM - 190
Intel i5 - 950
Intel i7 - 1250
AMD Opteron 6100 - 500

Maybe someone can explain how I can get this info from BOINCStats or one of the other statistic engines.

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Thx!

Paul

I think my phone (https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/show_host_detail.php?hostid=3224682) seems to do the same as an ATOM CPU.

Is the ATOM power efficient (RAC/W)? (or maybe you electric cost are so low in your area that it doesn't even matter lol).

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Electricity is about $0.10 / KwH here so it isn't a big deal. The Atom is 15W and the newer ones are even less.

I am looking at a server with 10 core Intel Xeon E7-4870 processors or AMD Opteron 6272 or Opteron 6378. It would be great if anyone has a good estimate as to the RAC per core with these processors. They are getting much more affordable on ebay so I want to know what to expect from each processor version. 500 per core on my Opteron 6176 really isn't enough.

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Thx!

Paul

Not quite what you are looking for, but the GFLOPS values should roughly scale out to RAC:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/cpu_list.php

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

It appears as if 500 per core is about right for a 6100. (I have a 6128 and that's around where it runs.)

The 6272 has an all-core boost of 2.4GHz, which is only .1 GHz faster than your 6176, so the big difference would be in having 64 cores.

The 6378 has an all-core boost of 2.7GHz, and I've seen tests (rumors?) that they run 5-10 per cent faster than the previous generation. This suggests a per core of 625, but that IS just extrapolation.

I, too, have been watching the price of used processors, and for the small price difference, I'm planning my upgrade to one of the 6300 processors.

The main two factors where extrapolation is less applicable that I am aware of are L2 cache size, and available memory per active core.

R@h really benefits well with sizeable L2 processor caches. So, not as meaningful to cross from large L2 to small L2 when trying to extrapolate.

R@h has some tasks that require more memory than others. In general, we often talk about 1GB per core as being enough for tasks and the operating system. So, the most meaningful data to extrapolate from would be systems with 1GB of memory per core, to systems with 1GB or more of memory per core.

As for the figures I linked in my prior post, I suppose they just show GFLOPs because RAC would really depend on how many hours per day the machine runs, how many other BOINC projects are active, how much CPU BOINC is allowed to use, etc. It cannot be presumed that all machines run 24x7, nor that they have done so long enough to fill in the window used to calculate RAC (is it 14 days? I think?).

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

I am assuming 100% dedicated to R@H & dedicated cruncher 24 hours a day. I also assume at least 1GB RAM per thread.

Larry - great information. My first server has 48 cores & 64GB of RAM. I want to go with the Opteron 6300 series to get 64 cores but it looks like 64GB of RAM is plenty. The Xeon E7-4870 has 10 cores with hyperthreading for 20 threads per processor. I am wondering if 80 threads with 128GB of RAM is worth the extra cost. I would love to use newer processors but the machines get really expensive.

Maybe the new chips will push down the cost of some of these legacy processors.

I would also love to see work units use more RAM if that would make them run faster.

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Thx!

Paul

How about the new Ryzen CPUs? Threadripper (the most expensive one) can handle up to 32 threads, at around 1k bucks. That's 30 bucks per thread (60 per core).

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It is interesting. I really like my multi-CPU systems and the fact that the older RAM is really inexpensive. A threadripper with 32GB RAM is likely an expensive machine.

I can add a few more rack mount servers and then I am going to need to buy a 19" equipment rack & more power! The best part of the newer processors is the performance and the power savings.

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Thx!

Paul

I am really interested in the RAC per core for Rosetta on an AMD Opteron 6380. It has a large L2 cache and faster clock rate than the 6176 I already have. I can buy another server but I don't want to pay twice as much for the 6380 if it isn't twice as fast. The 6176 machines are very inexpensive.

Thx

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Thx!

Paul

I am really interested in the RAC per core for Rosetta on an AMD Opteron 6380. It has a large L2 cache and faster clock rate than the 6176 I already have. I can buy another server but I don't want to pay twice as much for the 6380 if it isn't twice as fast. The 6176 machines are very inexpensive.

Thx

They will each be shown in here... somewhere
https://boincstats.com/en/stats/14/host/breakdown/cpu/0/3/0

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

After months of run time, it appears that the Opteron 6176 gets a RAC of about 450 per core. The 6380 get a RAC of about 500 so not a big improvement but the core count increases from 12 to 16. I am only running mini jobs and wonder how things will change when I get some standard tasks.

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Thx!

Paul