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from the I-don't-really-need-one-but-I-sure-do-want-one dept.
AMD's 64-core, 128-thread processor for workstation/"prosumer"/enthusiast users has been reviewed:
- The 64 Core Threadripper 3990X CPU Review: In The Midst Of Chaos, AMD Seeks Opportunity
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X Offers Incredible Linux Performance
- System76 Launches Impressive Line Of Thelio Major Linux Workstations Powered By AMD Ryzen Threadripper - Including The 3990X
- CPUs From 2004 Against AMD's New 64-Core Threadripper 3990X + Tests Against FX-9590
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64 Core, The Ultimate HEDT CPU For $4000 US Unleashed – MSI, ASRock & ASUS Break Several World-Records
- Review: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X - 64 processor cores and 128 threads in one CPU package
In summary, it's fast and power efficient. Many applications won't benefit from more than 32 cores, and different versions of Windows 10 handle 128 threads differently.
Linus Torvalds Just Made A Big Optimization To Help Code Compilation Times On Big CPUs
For those using GNU Make in particular as their build system, the parallel build times are about to be a lot faster beginning with Linux 5.6 for large core count systems. This landing just after the AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-core / 128-thread CPU launch is one example of systems to benefit from this kernel change when compiling a lot of code and making use of many GNU Make jobs.
Linus Torvalds himself changed around the kernel's pipe code to use exclusive waits when reading or writing. While this doesn't mean much for traditional/common piping of data, the GNU Make job-server is a big benefactor as it relies upon a pipe for limiting the parallelism. This technique though employed by the GNU Make job server is inefficient with today's high core count CPUs as all of the spawned processes are woken up rather than a single reader to be woken upon a writer's release.
Previously:
AMD Announces Ryzen 4000-Series Mobile Chips, 64-Core Threadripper Release Date, and More
AMD's Threadripper 3960X and 3970X Reviewed; 64-core 3990X Confirmed
AMD Announces 3rd-Generation Threadripper CPUs, Ryzen 9 3950X available on November 25th, and More
64-Core AMD Threadripper CPUs Suggested by Release of Cooler
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Monday February 10 2020, @08:41AM (3 children)
> This is looking like a CPU for a mean ZFS storage box...
Why? IME with ZFS, it is primarily a RAM hog, not a CPU hog. My ZFS boxes are mostly idle on CPU, but heavy on RAM, even with volume compression used. Dedup also seemed to be far more RAM heavy than CPU heavy.
RAM and IOPS are what ZFS need for performance, from what I can see.
What this CPU looks like to me, is a CPU For processing machines. Case in point, I have a 3 node cluster at home (2x Opteron 6 core per node) for a 36 core system. This draws over a KW and makes a hell of a noise when running full tilt, yet it provides approx half the cores a single Threadripper will, for less noise and power.
Likewise the 64 cores of threadripper are connected to a very fast and low latency bus, while my cluster is limited by having to shunt messages between each other over ethernet links, further reducing the performance of the cores.
Indeed, I may well be getting rid of the cluster and replacing it with one of these new CPUs once they get a bit cheaper and more common. Double the core count, more than double the performance, for less power and noise, what is not to like?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday February 10 2020, @10:04AM
Based on comments by Mark Papermaster [overclock3d.net], I expect we will see 24 cores on a "mainstream" AM5 socket Zen 4 CPU in late 2021 or early 2022, probably increasing to 32 cores by Zen 6. The 24-core Zen 4 would smoke your 36-core Opteron cluster.
Zen 3 Eypc is expected [hothardware.com] to stay at 64 cores this year. They could add more L3 cache to each of the chiplets instead of shrinking them. 96-128 cores will come later. My guess is that Threadripper will skip Zen 3, and that 64-core 3990X prices will remain high for a while.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday February 10 2020, @12:39PM (1 child)
I've been using ZFS for almost decade (on Linux) and it has been fine.
Full disclosure, I was a *very small* developer, but I still think its a great piece of software.
I'm thinking (as many have commented) of running loads of containers - and I also have an idea to try out (comments please).
System isolation on a few CPU's and guarded memory?
Nothing more annoying on a 32 cpu machine to have a thread lockup, bring the machine to a halt.
I know that MacOS has some sort of system protection, it would be nice to get some for the linux desktop...
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday February 10 2020, @01:20PM
Only toddlers use spinlocks these days. Real men write code with lockless structures. The architecture is very adequate for that, legacy operating systems are not. None of them.
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