Application Development: Linux Kernel Compile

A more real world benchmark to test the integer processing power of our Xeon servers is a Linux kernel compile. Although few people compile their own kernel, compiling other software on servers is a common task and this will give us a good idea of how the CPUs handle a complex build.

To do this we have downloaded the 3.11 kernel from kernel.org. We then compiled the kernel with the "time make -jx" command, where x is the maximum number of threads that the platform is capable of using. To make the graph more readable, the number of seconds in wall time was converted into the number of builds per hour.

Linux Kernel Compile

A kernel compile does not scale perfectly with more cores, but the Xeon E5-2699 v4 offers up to 2.7 times better performance than the Xeon it is supposed to replace. This kind of workload really seems to favor the new Broadwell core: even at slightly lower clockspeeds, the 18 core Xeon E5-2695 v4 beats the v3 version with the same number of cores by 9%. 

Database performance SAP S&D 2-tier
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  • Casper42 - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link

    HPE just dropped the 64GB LRDIMMs a week or two back.
    They are now exactly 2x the 32GB LRDIMM as far as List Price goes.
    LRDIMMs across the board are 31% more expensive than RDIMMs.
  • wishgranter - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link

    http://www.techpowerup.com/221459/samsung-starts-m...
  • wishgranter - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link

    While introducing a wide array of 10nm-class DDR4 modules with capacities ranging from 4GB for notebook PCs to 128GB for enterprise servers, Samsung will be extending its 20nm DRAM line-up with its new 10nm-class DRAM portfolio throughout the year.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link

    Perf/W is obviously a very exciting metric for server farmers and it generally exciting from a basic technology perspective, but it's absolute performance isn't amazing. Anyway, it's not like I'll be buying one anyway. LOL
  • asendra - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link

    This interest me in so far as this would be the updated processors in a supposedly-coming-this-year Mac Pro refresh. Not that I would personally fork that much cash, but I'm interested to see how much of a jump they will make.

    But things seam rather bleak. No wonder they decided to wait 3 years for a refresh.
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link

    Not sure which years you're counting in, but for the majority of us it takes 1.5 years from 09/2014 to today.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_%28microarch...
  • asendra - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link

    Apple didn't update the MacPros with Haswell-EP. They are still using Ivy Bridge
  • tipoo - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link


    Wonder what they'll do on the GPU side though. Too early for next generation 14nm FF GPUs from anyone, if Nvidia was even a choice due to OpenCL politics. Another GCN 1.0 part in 2016 would be...A bag of hurt.

    Still waiting on the high end 15" rMBP to have something better than GCN 1.0...The performance, shockingly, hasn't come all that far from even my Iris Pro model. Maybe double, which is something, but I'd like larger than that to upgrade from integrated...
  • extide - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link

    Nah, if they refresh it late this year, like in august or something like that, then 14/16nm FF GPU's will be available.

    At worst we would get GCN 1.2, but yeah it would suck to see 28nm GPU's put in there...
  • mdriftmeyer - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link

    On what planet do you not grasp FinFET 14nm end of June from AMD?

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