Ubuntu 23.10 Showing Nice Performance Improvements On Ampere Altra Max

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 23.10 Showing Nice Performance Improvements On Ampere Altra Max

Gigabyte (Giga Computing) recently sent over their G242-P36 HPC/AI Arm server platform built for Ampere Altra and Ampere Altra Max processors. This 2U server platform can accommodate up to four graphics cards or a mix of GPUs and DPUs if so desired, for maxing out the AI possibilities on Arm. I'll have up a full review on the G242-P36 soon while in this article is a look at the direction of the Ubuntu Server Arm performance from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to now with Ubuntu 23.10 ahead of the important Ubuntu 24.04 LTS cycle.

https://www.phoronix.com/review/ampere-altra-ubuntu2310

[Kjell]

Ubuntu is a bad representation of Linux

Debian is a better choice to showcase the general performance as a lot of distros are based on it (including Ubuntu).

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

Michael , if you talk to gigabyte, tell them to improve their servers.

1) Image a full 42u rack, How could I unscrew their tiny screw for a riser to add a pcie card if the screw is where they put it. Try to find a screwless design.
I end up having to unrack the 2u server move it a bench to remove a silly screw.

2) 24 drive front bay pcb backplane, I would rather have modular pcb front bay backplanes of 8 drive each in case a slimsas4i port goes bad I could just replace a 8 drive pcb or have to option to disable by unplug the power cable.

[schmidtbag]

Just curious: are these improvements specific to Ampere hardware or any ARMv8?

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Ubuntu is a bad representation of Linux

Debian is a better choice to showcase the general performance as a lot of distros are based on it (including Ubuntu).

What kernel build options specifically make the Ubuntu kernel worse for performance testing than a vanilla Debian kernel?

[AlanTuring69]

Ubuntu is a bad representation of Linux

Debian is a better choice to showcase the general performance as a lot of distros are based on it (including Ubuntu).

Ubuntu is not at all a bad representation of Linux and I'd wager you will find significantly more Ubuntu installations than Debian on the server world. Snap isn't a thing on that side and so Ubuntu is very, very good given they track reasonably recent versions of everything.

[Volta]

Ubuntu is not at all a bad representation of Linux and I'd wager you will find significantly more Ubuntu installations than Debian on the server world. Snap isn't a thing on that side and so Ubuntu is very, very good given they track reasonably recent versions of everything.

It's a bad representation, because they have bad defaults like powersave governor (may be default on others as well). They also mix desktop with server setup.

[edwaleni]

It's a bad representation, because they have bad defaults like powersave governor (may be default on others as well). They also mix desktop with server setup.

It's his first chance at a review since it arrived. I would expect there will be a compare of various ARMv8 Linux releases coming up in the future.

Then everyone can go nuts on what is wrong with X flavor.

Cut the guy some slack please.

[AlanTuring69]

It's a bad representation, because they have bad defaults like powersave governor (may be default on others as well). They also mix desktop with server setup.

That's demonstrably false / misleading. Using the same installer between desktop and server is a non-issue and is done in every distribution I'm aware of. I'd like to understand when the last time you've looked at Ubuntu is because the process for setting up a server has changed much in the past 13 years. I suspect you have not looked since then.

The power state is balanced by default which, by the way, is the exact same on Debian. This is coming from a long-time Debian user in myself, as well.