Intel Xeon E5 Version 3: Up to 18 Haswell EP Cores
by Johan De Gelas on September 8, 2014 12:30 PM ESTOpenFoam
Computational Fluid Dynamics is a very important part of the HPC world. Several readers told us that we should look into OpenFoam, and my lab was able to work with the professionals of Actiflow. Actiflow specializes in combining aerodynamics and product design. Calculating aerodynamics involves the use of CFD software, and Actiflow uses OpenFoam to accomplish this. To give you an idea what these skilled engineers can do, they worked with Ferrari to improve the underbody airflow of the Ferrari 599 and increase its downforce.
We were allowed to use one of their test cases as a benchmark, but we are not allowed to discuss the specific solver. All tests were done on OpenFoam 2.2.1 and openmpi-1.6.3.
Many CFD calculations do not scale well on clusters, unless you use InfiniBand. InfiniBand switches are quite expensive and even then there are limits to scaling. We do not have an InfiniBand switch in the lab, unfortunately. Although it's not as low latency as InfiniBand, we do have a good 10G Ethernet infrastructure, which performs rather well. So we can compare our newest Xeon server with a basic cluster.
We also found AVX code inside OpenFoam 2.2.1, so we assume that this is one of the cases where AVX improves FP performance. To understand this real world test case better, we'll start with a single-threaded benchmark.
As this is AVX code, the clock speed "rules" change. A 2.3GHz Xeon E5 v3 can fall back to 1.9GHz if necessary, but it may also boost to 3.3GHz if the thermals allow it. The Xeon 2695 v3 has less TDP headroom and as a result it performs slightly slower than the Xeon E5-2699 v3. Still they cannot beat the Xeon E5-2667 v3 in single-threaded HPC performance. The latter is the better chip for this workload as it guarantees 2.7GHz and can boost up to 3.5GHz. As the previous Xeons also support AVX and run between 2.7 and 3.3GHz, they keep up with the Xeon E5-2667 v3.
Of course, most HPC code is now multi-threaded. We next ran OpenFOAM at one thread per physical core, which is about 5% faster than running with one thread per logical core (likely due to AVX).
If you work professionally with OpenFOAM, it is clear that it pays off to understand what a certain CPU offers. If money does not matter much, the Xeon E5-2699 v3 does what is has to, which is to beat everybody else despite the fact that OpenFOAM does not scale that well beyond a certain point.
To give you an idea of what we're seeing, with 16 threads on the Xeon E5-2699 v3 we were already running at 30 runs per hour. Despite the fact that our workload is already a pretty heavy one (>600k cells), it is clear you need a larger mesh to really use the best Xeons of today to their full potential.
A less expensive option is the Xeon E5-2667 v3, but the real winner here is the Xeon E5-2650L v3 which costs a full $1000 per CPU les than the Xeon E5-2695 v3 and consumes quite a bit less as we will see on the next page.
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MorinMoss - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
Hello from 2019.AMD has a LOT of ground to make up but it's a new world and a new race
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-and-ryzen...
Kevin G - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
As an owner of a dual Opteron 6376 system, I shudder at how far behind that platform is. Then I look down and see that I have both of my kidneys as I didn't need to sell one for a pair of Xeons so I don't feel so bad. For the price of one E5-2660v3 I was able to pick up two Opteron 6376's.wallysb01 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
But the rest of the system cost is about the same. So you get 1/2 the performance for a 10% discount. YEPPY!Kevin G - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Nope. Build price after all the upgrades over the course of two years is some where around $3600 USD. The two Opterons accounted for a bit more than a third of that price. Not bad for 32 cores and 128 GB of memory. Even with Haswell-E being twice as fast, I'd have to spend nearly twice as much (CPU's cost twice as much as does DDR4 compared to when I bought my DDR3 memory). To put it into prespective, a single Xeon E5 2999v3 might be faster than my build but I was able to build an entire system for less than the price Intel's flagship server CPU.I will say something odd - component prices have increased since I purchased parts. RAM prices have gone up by 50% and the motherboard I use has seemingly increased in price by $100 due to scarcity. Enthusiast video card prices have also gotten crazy over the past couple of years so a high end video card is $100 more for top of the line in the consumer space.
wallysb01 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Going to the E5 2699 isn’t needed. A pair of 2660 v3s is probably going to be nearly 2x as fast the 6376, especially for floating point where your 32 cores are more like 16 cores or for jobs that can’t use very many threads. True a pair of 2660s will be twice as expensive. On a total system it would add about $1.5K. We’ll have to wait for the workstation slanted view, but for an extra $1.5K, you’d probably have a workstation that’s much better at most tasks.Kevin G - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Actually if you're aiming to double the performance of a dual Opteron 6376, two E5-2695v3's look to be a good pick for that target according to this review. A pair of those will set you pack $4848 which is more than what my complete system build cost.Processors are only one component. So while a dual Xeon E5-2695v3 system would be twice as fast, total system cost is also approaching double due to memory and motherboard pricing differences.
Kahenraz - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I'm running a 6376 server as well and, although I too yearn for improved single-threaded performance, I could actually afford to own this one. As delicious as these Intel processors are, they are not priced for us mere mortals.From a price/performance standpoint, I would still build another Opteron server unless I knew that single-threaded performance was critical.
JDG1980 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The E5-2630 v3 is cheaper than the Opteron 6376 and I would be very surprised if it didn't offer better performance.Kahenraz - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
6376s can be had very cheaply on the second-hand market, especially bundled with a motherboard. Additionally, the E5-2630 v3 requires both a premium on the board and DDR4 memory.I'd wager you could still build an Opteron 6376 system for half or less.
Kevin G - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
It'd only be fair to go with the second hand market for the E5-2630v3's but being new means they don't exist. :)Still going by new prices, an Opteron 6376 will be cheaper but roughly 33% from what I can tell. You're correct that the new Xeon's have a premium pricing on motherboards and DDR4 memory.