Bulldozer for Servers: Testing AMD's "Interlagos" Opteron 6200 Series
by Johan De Gelas on November 15, 2011 5:09 PM ESTBenchmark Configuration
Since AMD sent us a 1U Supermicro server, we had to resort to testing our 1U servers again. That is why we went back to the ASUS RS700 for the Xeon. It is a bit unfortunate as on average 1U servers have a relatively worse performance/watt ratio than other form factors such as 2U and blades. Of course, 1U still makes sense in low cost, high density HPC environments.
Supermicro A+ server 1022G-URG (1U Chassis)
| CPU |
Two AMD Opteron "Bulldozer" 6276 at 2.3GHz Two AMD Opteron "Magny-Cours" 6174 at 2.2GHz |
| RAM | 64GB (8x8GB) DDR3-1600 Samsung M393B1K70DH0-CK0 |
| Motherboard | SuperMicro H8DGU-F |
| Internal Disks |
2 x Intel SLC X25-E 32GB or 1 x Intel MLC SSD510 120GB |
| Chipset | AMD Chipset SR5670 + SP5100 |
| BIOS version | v2.81 (10/28/2011) |
| PSU | SuperMicro PWS-704P-1R 750Watt |
The AMD CPUS have four memory channels per CPU. The new Interlagos Bulldozer CPU supports DDR3-1600, and thus our dual CPU configuration gets eight DIMMs for maximum bandwidth.
Asus RS700-E6/RS4 1U Server
| CPU |
Two Intel Xeon X5670 at 2.93GHz - 6 cores Two Intel Xeon X5650 at 2.66GHz - 6 cores |
| RAM | 48GB (12x4GB) Kingston DDR3-1333 FB372D3D4P13C9ED1 |
| Motherboard | Asus Z8PS-D12-1U |
| Chipset | Intel 5520 |
| BIOS version | 1102 (08/25/2011) |
| PSU | 770W Delta Electronics DPS-770AB |
To speed up testing, we tested with the Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron system in parallel. As we didn't have more than eight 8GB DIMMs, we used our 4GB DDR3-1333 DIMMs. The Xeon system only gets 48GB, but this is no disadvantage as our benchmark with the highest memory footprint (vApus FOS, 5 tiles) uses no more than 36GB of RAM.
We measured the difference between 12x4GB and 8x8GB of RAM and recalculated the power consumption for our power measurements (note that the differences were very small). There is no alternative as our Xeon has three memory channels and cannot be outfitted with the same amount of RAM as our Opteron system (four channels).
We chose the Xeons based on AMD's positioning. The Xeon X5649 is priced at the same level as the Opteron 6276 but we didn't have the X5649 in the labs. As we suggested earlier, the Opteron 6276 should reach the performance of the X5650 to be attractive, so we tested with the X5670 and X5650. We only tested with the X5670 in some of the tests because of time constraints.
Common Storage System
For the virtualization tests, each server gets an adaptec 5085 PCIe x8 (driver aacraid v1.1-5.1[2459] b 469512) connected to six Cheetah 300GB 15000 RPM SAS disks (RAID-0) inside a Promise JBOD J300s. The virtualization testing requires more storage IOPs than our standard Promise JBOD with six SAS drives can provide. To counter this, we added internal SSDs:
- We installed the Oracle Swingbench VMs (vApus Mark II) on two internal X25-E SSDs (no RAID). The Oracle database is only 6GB large. We test with two tiles. On each SSD, each OLTP VM accesses its own database data. All other VMs (web, SQL Server OLAP) are stored on the Promise JBOD (see above).
- With vApus FOS, Zimbra is the I/O intensive VM. We spread the Zimbra data over the two Intel X25-E SSDs (no RAID). All other VMs (web, MySQL OLAP) get their data from the Promise JBOD (see above).
We monitored disk activity and phyiscal disk adapter latency (as reported by VMware vSphere) was between 0.5 and 2.5 ms.
Software configuration
All vApus testing was done one ESXi vSphere 5--VMware ESXi 5.0.0 (b 469512 - VMkernel SMP build-348481 Jan-12-2011 x86_64) to be more specific. All vmdks use thick provisioning, independent, and persistent. The power policy is "Balanced Power" unless indicated otherwise. All other testing was done on Windows 2008 R2 SP1.
Other notes
Both servers were fed by a standard European 230V (16 Amps max.) powerline. The room temperature was monitored and kept at 23°C by our Airwell CRACs.
We used the Racktivity ES1008 Energy Switch PDU to measure power. Using a PDU for accurate power measurements might same pretty insane, but this is not your average PDU. Measurement circuits of most PDUs assume that the incoming AC is a perfect sine wave, but it never is. However, the Rackitivity PDU measures true RMS current and voltage at a very high sample rate: up to 20,000 measurements per second for the complete PDU.
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zappb - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
Thanks Johan for the ungodly amount of time you and your team spent on this review, also thanks to all contributors to the comments which was very useful to get more context to someone like myself who is not very up to speed with server tech.The 45 Watt and 65 watt Opterons not mentioned on the front page of the article (but mentioned in the comments - are these based on Interlagos?)
To me it looks like a big win for AMD - and these benchmarks are are not even optimised for the architecture (Linux kernel 3 was not used - can't wait to see updated benchmarks, something like FreeBSD or when we get an updated scheduler for the windows server OS's...should make a big difference.
Really low idle power consumption is nice, and Im planning to pick one of these up (for home use) to play around with FreeBSD, vm's, etc...just for training purposes,
The other point about Intel's sandybridge Xeons, these are just going to be 8 core 3960x right? Which may not change the current server landscape very much depending on their prices.
JWesterby - Friday, February 10, 2012 - link
Respect is due, Johan! You did a very useful review under significant limitations. The very best part is to point an unbiased light at a damned interesting CPU. There is an important "next step," which I will address shortly.As always, just the mention of AMD brings out hysterical attacks. One would think we were talking about Stem Cell research!! There is no real discussion -- it's pitchforks, lit torches, and a stake ready for poor Johan and anyone else ready and willing to consider the mere possibility that AMD have produced worthy technology!!
Computer technology - doing it, anyway - has changed. It's become ALL about the bloody money, and the "culture" of the people doing technology has also changed -- it has become much more cut-throat, there is far less collegiality, and the number of people willing to take risks on projects has become really uncommon. Qualified people doing serious technology just because they can is uncommon.
There is no end to posers (including some on this board), Machiavellian Fortune 500 IT managers, and "Project Managers" who are clueless (there ARE some great IT managers and wonderful PM's but their numbers are shrinking). My hat to those in Open Source - they are the Last Bastion of decency for the sake of decency, and technology merely for the joy of doing it !!
"Back in the day" people seemed really into the technology, solving difficult problems, and making good things happen. There was truly a culture. For example not taking a moment to help someone on the team or otherwise made you a jerk. Development was a craft or an art, and we were all in it together. We are loosing that, and it's become more dog-eat-dog with a kind of mean spirit. What a shame. Many of the comments here are perfect examples -- people who would rather burn down the temple than give a new and challenging technology a good think.
Personally I can't wait to get my hands on a couple of AMD's new CPU's, build a decent server, and carefully work out the issues with patience. These new Opterons are like a whole new tech that may be the beginning of all new territory.
My passion and some professional work is coding at the back end in C/C++ and I'm just beginning to understand CUDA and using GPU's to beef up parallel code. My work is all around (big) data warehousing, cutting edge columnar databases, almost everything running virtual, all the way through to analytics on BI platforms. I do all of that both on MS Server 2008, Solaris and FreeBSD. All that is a perfect environment to test AMD's "new territory."
Probably worth a blog at some point because these processors are new territory and using them well will take some work just keeping track of all the small things that shake out. That's the "next step" that this and other reviews require to really understand AMD's Bulldozers. Doing that well, if AMD is right with these chips, means being able to build some great back-end servers at a much more approachable price; more importantly without paying an "Intel" tax, and in the end having two strong vendors and thereby more freedom to make the best choice for the requirement.
PhotoPrint - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
you should make fair comparison at the same price range!lts like comparing GTX580 VS AMD RADEON 6950!
g101 - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - link
Wow, anad let the truth about bulldozer leak out.ppennisi - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
To obtain maximum performance from my Dell R715 server equipped with dual Interlagos processor I had to DISABLE C1E in the BIOS.Under VMware the machines performance changed completely, almost doubled in performance.
Maybe you should try it.
anti_shill - Monday, April 2, 2012 - link
Here's a more accurate reflection of Bulldozer/ interlagos performance, untainted by intel ad bucks...http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&...
But if u really want to see what the true story is, have a look at AMD's stock price lately, and their server wins. They absolutely smoke intel on virtualization, and anything that requires a lot of threads. It's not even close. That would be the reason this review pits Interlagos against an Intel processor that costs twice as much.