A Look At The Windows vs. Linux Scaling Performance Up To 64 Threads With The AMD 2990WX

This past week we looked at the Windows 10 vs. Linux performance for AMD's just-launched Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX and given the interest from that then ran some Windows Server benchmarks to see if the performance of this 64-thread CPU would be more competitive to Linux. From those Windows vs. Linux tests there has been much speculation that the performance disparity is due to Windows scheduler being less optimized for high core/thread count processors and its NUMA awareness being less vetted than the Linux kernel. For getting a better idea, here are benchmarks of Windows Server 2019 preview versus Ubuntu Linux when testing varying thread/core counts for the AMD Threadripper 2990WX.

Toggled via the BIOS was SMT as well as various CCX configurations and each step of the way comparing the Windows Server 2019 Build 17733 performance to that of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with the Linux 4.18 kernel in various multi-threaded benchmarks supported under both operating systems.

The hardware was maintained throughout testing and included the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX at stock speeds, 4 x 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, Samsung 970 EVO 500GB NVMe SSD, and AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics. The thread configurations tested on Windows and Linux included the stock 64-thread configuration, 32 threads by disabling SMT, 24 threads (3 + 3 CCX configuration), 16 threads (4 + 0 and 2 + 2), 12 threads (3 + 0), 8 threads (2 + 0 and 1 + 1), and 4 threads (1 + 0).

These Windows/Linux scaling benchmarks were carried out in a fully automated, reproducible, and transparent manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.