Investigating Cavium's ThunderX: The First ARM Server SoC With Ambition
by Johan De Gelas on June 15, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SoCs
- IT Computing
- Enterprise
- Enterprise CPUs
- Microserver
- Cavium
Multi-Threaded Integer Performance: SPEC CPU2006
The value of SPEC CPU2006 int rate is questionable as it puts too much emphasis on bandwidth and way too little emphasis on data synchronization. However, it does give some indication of the total "raw" integer compute power available.
| Subtest SPECCPU2006 integer |
Application type | Cavium ThunderX 2 GHz |
Xeon D-1587 1.8-2.4 |
Xeon E5-2640 v4 2.4-2.6 |
| 400.perlbench | Spam filter | 372 | 394 | 322 |
| 401.bzip2 | Compression | 166 | 225 | 216 |
| 403.gcc | Compiling | 257 | 218 | 265 |
| 429.mcf | Vehicle scheduling | 110 | 130 | 224 |
| 445.gobmk | Game AI | 411 | 337 | 269 |
| 456.hmmer | Protein seq. analyses | 198 | 299 | 281 |
| 458.sjeng | Chess | 412 | 362 | 283 |
| 462.libquantum | Quantum sim | 139 | 126 | 231 |
| 464.h264ref | Video encoding | 528 | 487 | 421 |
| 471.omnetpp | Network sim | 121 | 127 | 172 |
| 473.astar | Pathfinding | 143 | 165 | 195 |
| 483.xalancbmk | XML processing | 227 | 219 | 266 |
On average, the ThunderX delivers the throughput of an Xeon D1581 or Xeon E5-2640. There are some noticeable differences between the subtest though, especially if you check the scalability.
| Subtest SPECCPU2006 integer |
Application type | Cavium ThunderX 2 GHz (48 copies) |
Xeon D-1587 1.8-2.3 (32 copies) |
Xeon E5-2640 v4 2.4-2.6 (20 copies) |
| 400.perlbench | Spam filter | 43x | 14x | 10x |
| 401.bzip2 | Compression | 25x | 13x | 11x |
| 403.gcc | Compiling | 22x | 8x | 9x |
| 429.mcf | Vehicle scheduling | 15x | 3x | 6x |
| 445.gobmk | Game AI | 41x | 17x | 12x |
| 456.hmmer | Protein seq. analyses | 42x | 14x | 11x |
| 458.sjeng | Chess | 47x | 16x | 11x |
| 462.libquantum | Quantum sim | 8x | 2x | 4x |
| 464.h264ref | Video encoding | 42x | 13x | 10x |
| 471.omnetpp | Network sim | 17x | 6x | 7x |
| 473.astar | Pathfinding | 16x | 10x | 10x |
| 483.xalancbmk | XML processing | 27x | 7x | 7x |
Mcf is memory latency bound, but if you run 32 threads on the Xeon D, you completely swamp its memory subsystem. The ThunderX and Xeon E5 scale better simply because they can deliver better bandwidth... but one has to wonder if this has anything to do with what people who actually use mcf will experience, as mcf is mostly latency bound. It seems like a corner case.
The XML processing testis probably a lot closer to the real world: it is much easier to split XML (or JSON) processing into many parallel parts (one per request). This is something that fits the ThunderX very well, it edges out the best Xeon D. The same is true for the video encoding tests. This indicates that the ThunderX is most likely a capable Content Delivery Network (CDN) server.
Gcc and sjeng scale well and as a result, the Thunder-X really shines in these subtests.
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Daniel Egger - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
I could hardly disagree more about the remote management of SuperMicro vs. HP. Remote management of HP is *the horror*, I've never seen worse and I've seen a lot. It's clunky, it requires a license to be useful (others do to but SuperMicro does not have such nonsense), the BCM tends to crash a lot (which is very annoying for a remote management solution), boot is even slower than all other systems I know due to the way they integrate the BIOS and remote management on the system and it also uses Java unless you have Windows machines around to use the .NET version.For the remote management alone I would chose SuperMicro over most other vendors any day.
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
I found the .Net client of HP much less sluggish, and I have seen no crashing at all. I guess there is no optimal remote management client, but I really like the "boot into firmware" option that Intel implemented.rahvin - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Not only that but Supermicro actually releases updates for their BCM's. I had the same shocked reaction to the HP claim. Started to wonder if I was the only one that thought supermicro was light years ahead in usability.I should note that Supermicro's awful Java tool works on Linux as well as windows. Though it refuses to run if your Java isn't the newest version available.
pencea - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
All these articles and yet still no review for the GTX 1080, while other major sites have already posted their reviews of both 1070 & 1080. Guru3D already has 2 custom 1080 and a custom 1070 review up.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
It'll be done when it's done.pencea - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
Unacceptably late for something that should've been posted weeks ago.Meteor2 - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Will anyone read it though? Your ad impressions are going to suffer.Ryan Smith - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Maybe. Maybe not. But it's my own fault regardless. All I can do is get it done as soon as I reasonably can, and hope it's something you guys find useful.name99 - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Give it a freaking rest. No-one is impressed by your constant whining about this.pencea - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Not looking to impress anyone. As a long time viewer of this site, I'm simply disappointed that a reputational site like this is constantly late for GPU reviews.