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Date:      Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:52:18 -0700
From:      Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd@gmail.com>
To:        Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au>
Cc:        amvandemore@gmail.com, Maho NAKATA <chat95@mac.com>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, alc@freebsd.org, alan.l.cox@gmail.com, avg@freebsd.org, als@modulus.org
Subject:   Re: HyperThreading makes worse to me (was Re: How to reproduce: Re: Only 70% of theoretical peak performance on FreeBSD 8/amd64, Corei7 920)
Message-ID:  <r2i7d6fde3d1004150052w2632ce27w29624a3f3ad801a4@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20100415135034.J52200@sola.nimnet.asn.au>
References:  <20100414.082109.29593248145846106.chat95@mac.com> <4BC5DEB4.1090208@freebsd.org> <x2k6201873e1004140934z6f7518b9j72ffd9e1adc1ad49@mail.gmail.com> <20100415.094643.450985660335296086.chat95@mac.com> <n2i7d6fde3d1004141949z2689a81cwf8c48805ea09d68@mail.gmail.com> <k2x7d6fde3d1004141950t81b4214awddea4563182526c5@mail.gmail.com> <20100415135034.J52200@sola.nimnet.asn.au>

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On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2010, Garrett Cooper wrote:
> =A0> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 7:49 PM, Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd@gmail.com>=
 wrote:
> =A0> > On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Maho NAKATA <chat95@mac.com> wrot=
e:
> =A0> >> Hi Andry and Adam
> =A0> >>
> =A0> >> My test again. No desktop, etc. I just run dgemm.
> =A0> >> Contrary to Adam's result, Hyper Threading makes the performance =
worse.
> =A0> >> all tests are done on Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz. (TurboBoost @2.8GHz)
> =A0> >>
> =A0> >> Turbo Boost off, Hyper threading off: 82% (35GFlops) =A0 =A0[1]
> =A0> >> Turbo Boost off, Hyper threading off: 72% (30.5GFlops) =A0[2]
>
> Er, shouldn't one of those say HTT on? =A0and/or Turbo boost on? =A0Else
> they're both the same test as [4] but with different results?

There's a problem with 8.x+ cores reported by the kernel. For some odd
reason more recent Intel processors aren't reporting themselves as
HT-enabled when they have HT-cores (see: kern/145385).

I didn't look into the issue too hard, but since it does seem to be a
major performance loss perhaps I should; besides, it would be good
experience to put under my belt :].

> =A0> >> Turbo Boost on, =A0Hyper threading on: 71% (32GFlops) =A0 =A0[3]
> =A0> >> Turbo Boost off, Hyper threading off: 84-89% (38-40GFlops) [4]
>
> Clarification of all four possible test configs - 8 if you add pinning
> CPUs or not - might make this a bit clearer?
>
> =A0> > Doesn't this make sense? Hyperthreaded cores in Intel procs still
> =A0> > provide an incomplete set of registers as they're logical processo=
rs,
> =A0> > so I would expect for things to be slower if they're automatically=
 run
> =A0> > on the SMT cores instead of the physical ones.
>
> Since we're talking FP, do HTT 'cores' share an FPU, or have their own?
> If contended, you'd have to expect worse (at least FP) performance, no?

   Ah, that's another excellent point. What instructions is dgemm
using -- pure integer based arithmetic, floating point arithmetic,
specialized operations that would benefit from using SIMD, etc?

> =A0> > Is there a weighting scheme to SCHED_ULE where logical processors
> =A0> > (like the SMT variety) get a lower score than real processors do, =
and
> =A0> > thus get scheduled for less intensive interrupting tasks, or maybe
> =A0> > just don't get scheduled in high use scenarios like it would if it=
 was
> =A0> > a physical processor?
> =A0>
> =A0> Err... wait. Didn't see that the turbo boost results didn't scale
> =A0> linearly or align with one another until just a sec ago. Nevermind m=
y
> =A0> previous comment.
>
> Waiting for the fog to lift ..

    As am I. I don't know enough in this area, but I'm definitely open
to learning.

Thanks,
-Garrett



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