Building The Linux Kernel In 60 Seconds

[leeenux]

i don't care about how many cores do you use. i only care for speed per money. and speed per watt energy usage.

less clock speed means in fact a higher energy efficiency!
more cores means more energy efficiency!

Intel's mindless fans tend to ignore these aspects except when it suits their current argument. Heck, go look at the mindless drivel on Anandtech, they've released their 2nd consecutive Bulldozer Opteron article where they've whined about how it's too hard to make workloads scale past 8 cores, so their just going to use Cinnebench and declare Xeon the CPU to buy, even though less than one percent of servers are purchased for moderately threaded FP heavy loads.

It's starting to look like Intel is buying their reviews from Phoronix too, read the first paragraph:

Besides finishing up the Phoronix Test Suite 3.6-Arendal release this weekend, on Saturday I began running some new Intel CPU benchmarks. In building the Linux 3.1 kernel for x86_64 in a default configuration (make defconfig), I've now managed to trim down the compile time to less than sixty seconds on a single-socket desktop system. Similar speeds can be achieved out of multi-socket servers and other configurations, but this is the first time I'm seeing such kernel build speeds out of a single processor -- the AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer doesn't come close.

OK, that's fine, except you aren't providing any reference of how much faster than Bulldozer it is, but just using strong language to suggest Bulldozer is completely inferior, without offering any actual facts to back it up. It sounds to me like you've already benchmarked both on similar configurations, bar graphs and hard numbers or STFU. I have an FX-8120, I'll gladly do a timed kernel compiling if you'll provide the exact parameters you're using to compile it on the Intel system.

[NoEffex]

Intel's mindless fans tend to ignore these aspects except when it suits their current argument. Heck, go look at the mindless drivel on Anandtech, they've released their 2nd consecutive Bulldozer Opteron article where they've whined about how it's too hard to make workloads scale past 8 cores, so their just going to use Cinnebench and declare Xeon the CPU to buy, even though less than one percent of servers are purchased for moderately threaded FP heavy loads.

It's starting to look like Intel is buying their reviews from Phoronix too, read the first paragraph:



OK, that's fine, except you aren't providing any reference of how much faster than Bulldozer it is, but just using strong language to suggest Bulldozer is completely inferior, without offering any actual facts to back it up. It sounds to me like you've already benchmarked both on similar configurations, bar graphs and hard numbers or STFU. I have an FX-8120, I'll gladly do a timed kernel compiling if you'll provide the exact parameters you're using to compile it on the Intel system.

You can typically do math to gauge how much worse it is. Bulldozer gets stomped by the mid-lower-end i7's/i5's and since this stomps those then it's going to completely obliterate bulldozer.

I had bought a bulldozer-based system because bulldozer was supposed to be actually a run for having a lot of performance. The thing sucked. The "8-core" CPU is pretty much a hyper-threaded quad-core but slightly worse. It is really not worth buying. Bulldozer is legitimately a disaster and the only things AMD has going for them are 1. server CPUs (Heavily threaded applications such as databases thrive on high-core opteron systems, like 32-core or 48-core) 2. graphics cards (The ATI cards are similar in performance to the NVIDIA cards in that the highest-end AMD card MIGHT be better than the highest-end NVIDIA though that could just be false). Desktop CPUs is not their thing and I heavily regret ever purchasing one.

When the sandy bridge e came out I saw an opportunity and bought the 3930k (not paying an extra arm or leg for slightly better performance). It is better in every aspect. The bulldozer I had basically could not handle anything I run (IntelliJ being chief among those applications) and it just was not pretty at all, let alone play any games. The i7 can handle several vms, 3-4 intellij windows, and still not show any signs of slowing down. It's significantly better and IMO more worth the money. A couple hundred dollars more (Or maybe even less than that) for well over twice the power is worth it in a heartbeat.

[bnolsen]

You came in here very confrontationally spouting things that reviewers all disagree with, and that I've personally verified some of the results of these reviewers myself.

In usd terms the 3930x is 599 and the 6272 is 539. Not a big difference, these new intels are still at introductory prices.

And don't ever use supermicro boards. ever, esp with linux. I've had bad experiences with all 4 models (multi socket). They are bad about fixing crap bioses, etc. Tyan is the way to go, at this level they generally make a superior board and try to make sure it works.

Every single benchmark I've seen shows the 627x performing only slightly better than the 61xx series. Are they all being paid off to make amd look bad??? And the xeons they test against are still last gen intel tech, and they beat the amds.

Core for core amd can't beat intel. AMD may scale slightly better than intel but they can't scale well enough to make up for the really crappy throughput.

[rrohbeck]

I get 90 seconds for $280 worth of CPU. And I have ECC memory and IOMMU

[haplo602]

Someone having similar Opteron system to what you mentioned should answer and confirm that.

It does not beat in energy efficiency for sure though.

The funny thing is, I skimmed over the 2 BD benchmark article graphs (original one and compiler perf comparison). Timed kernel compilation is not there (at least not on the normal one, maybe it is there for paying users).

[petlab]

It takes me 106 seconds. I am using a Phenom II x6 = USD189. and 8gb of ECC DDR3 and an old SSD.

gentoo 3.1.4-hardened sources
make mrproper; make defconfig; time make -j13

defconfig takes 3 seconds.

So, in the ballpark. I haven't had enough machines to offer a real opinion. I've been an AMD fanboy mostly because of price.
I'm running it at 3700 on all cores, air cooled and the memory at 1600 on an ASUS M4A89GTD PRO USB3. EDAC

[Qaridarium]

Intel's mindless fans tend to ignore these aspects except when it suits their current argument. Heck, go look at the mindless drivel on Anandtech, they've released their 2nd consecutive Bulldozer Opteron article where they've whined about how it's too hard to make workloads scale past 8 cores, so their just going to use Cinnebench and declare Xeon the CPU to buy, even though less than one percent of servers are purchased for moderately threaded FP heavy loads.

It's starting to look like Intel is buying their reviews from Phoronix too, read the first paragraph:
OK, that's fine, except you aren't providing any reference of how much faster than Bulldozer it is, but just using strong language to suggest Bulldozer is completely inferior, without offering any actual facts to back it up. It sounds to me like you've already benchmarked both on similar configurations, bar graphs and hard numbers or STFU. I have an FX-8120, I'll gladly do a timed kernel compiling if you'll provide the exact parameters you're using to compile it on the Intel system.

yes you get it!

michael compared a 1000€ cpu to an 240€ amd cpu this is only a joke! really!

even a AMD Opteron 6276 only cost you 724,99 € and you can put it into a single socket mainboard. the intel 3960X cost in germany 920€-1000€

if he really want to compare amd vs intel he should buy a AMD Opteron 6276 as a competitor against the 3960X


intels hardware PR-marketing gift turn people into brainless zombies.

[Qaridarium]

[QUOTE=NoEffex;241708]You can typically do math to gauge how much worse it is. Bulldozer gets stomped by the mid-lower-end i7's/i5's and since this stomps those then it's going to completely obliterate bulldozer.

in fact a AMD Opteron 6276 is also a bulldozer. and your "mid-lower-end" cpus don't have any chance! so you talk just bullshit!

I had bought a bulldozer-based system because bulldozer was supposed to be actually a run for having a lot of performance. The thing sucked. The "8-core" CPU is pretty much a hyper-threaded quad-core but slightly worse. It is really not worth buying. Bulldozer is legitimately a disaster and the only things AMD has going for them are 1. server CPUs (Heavily threaded applications such as databases thrive on high-core opteron systems, like 32-core or 48-core) 2. graphics cards (The ATI cards are similar in performance to the NVIDIA cards in that the highest-end AMD card MIGHT be better than the highest-end NVIDIA though that could just be false). Desktop CPUs is not their thing and I heavily regret ever purchasing one.

in fact you talk about "THE" bulldozer but the AMD Opteron 6276 is also a bulldozer.

you just buyed the midrange version and not the highend version of the bulldozer.

When the sandy bridge e came out I saw an opportunity and bought the 3930k (not paying an extra arm or leg for slightly better performance). It is better in every aspect. The bulldozer I had basically could not handle anything I run (IntelliJ being chief among those applications) and it just was not pretty at all, let alone play any games. The i7 can handle several vms, 3-4 intellij windows, and still not show any signs of slowing down. It's significantly better and IMO more worth the money. A couple hundred dollars more (Or maybe even less than that) for well over twice the power is worth it in a heartbeat.

you are just misinformed the FX8150 is not amd's highend cpu.

[Qaridarium]

You came in here very confrontationally spouting things that reviewers all disagree with, and that I've personally verified some of the results of these reviewers myself.
In usd terms the 3930x is 599 and the 6272 is 539. Not a big difference, these new intels are still at introductory prices.
And don't ever use supermicro boards. ever, esp with linux. I've had bad experiences with all 4 models (multi socket). They are bad about fixing crap bioses, etc. Tyan is the way to go, at this level they generally make a superior board and try to make sure it works.
Every single benchmark I've seen shows the 627x performing only slightly better than the 61xx series. Are they all being paid off to make amd look bad??? And the xeons they test against are still last gen intel tech, and they beat the amds.
Core for core amd can't beat intel. AMD may scale slightly better than intel but they can't scale well enough to make up for the really crappy throughput.

"Are they all being paid off to make amd look bad??? "

simple but true answer: YES! many windows7 tests but the windows7 scheduler can't handle the bulldozer correctly and many windows server 2008 benchmarks but the scheduler of this OS also can't handle the bulldozer and then they use inlet-compiler compiled software.

you can't trust these test results.

the 3960X do have 6*4 integer units@3,3ghz (79,2) the opteron do have 16*2 integer units@2,3ghz (73,6)

if all works right the intel should only be 7,6% faster.

Both do have a 256bit ram interface.

[Michael]

OK, that's fine, except you aren't providing any reference of how much faster than Bulldozer it is, but just using strong language to suggest Bulldozer is completely inferior, without offering any actual facts to back it up. It sounds to me like you've already benchmarked both on similar configurations, bar graphs and hard numbers or STFU. I have an FX-8120, I'll gladly do a timed kernel compiling if you'll provide the exact parameters you're using to compile it on the Intel system.

As said in the article, the actual review is coming up soon...