Intel Linux Optimizations Help AMD EPYC "Genoa" Improve Scaling To 384 Threads

Not only was Intel's Linux stack delivering much greater performance at 192 cores for the PostgreSQL database server, it also translated into rather lofty advantages for testing various kernel primitive operations with Stress-NG.

Across the various workloads tested -- which was only limited by my time and having just one AMD Genoa server currently -- for these very time intensive tests, Intel's Linux optimization work continues showing huge advantages at higher core counts... Even for AMD EPYC servers.

With Meta's RocksDB database software, more Intel's optimized Linux kernel continued showing advantages compared to CentOS Stream and the current state of Ubuntu Linux.

Similar to the recent Intel Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids scaling benchmarks, AMD 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa" showed much benefit from Intel's open-source optimizations too up to the 384 thread configuration of two flagship EPYC 9654 processors. Intel's Linux optimizations over the year have proven extremely beneficial to the entire ecosystem and in many instances do end up benefiting AMD x86_64 hardware too. As next year's Sierra Forest launch approaches and higher core counts with next-generation Xeon Scalable processors, it's likely -- and hoped -- we'll see much more out of Intel's excellent software engineering team for uncovering and addressing more low-level kernel contention issues and other scalability challenges. With AMD's growing success in the data center, hopefully their Linux software team continues to grow as well and we see more generic kernel optimizations/improvements from them too.

As these latest Intel patches continue undergoing review for upstreaming and any other interesting performance work published, stay tuned to Phoronix to learn about these interesting happenings.