Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:20:51 +1000 (EST) From: User Ernie <ernie@qbic.eis.net.au> To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Subject: Performance of Folding@Home and Distributed Folding cleints Message-ID: <200311292220.hATMKpgM054884@qbic.eis.net.au>
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A question for the folks familiar with the Folding@Home protein folding project. I have been doing some performance testing of FreeBSD vs Linux in a couple of the Distrbuted Computing projects particulary Folding@Home and Distributed folding. The one that I am curios about is Folding@Home where their is no specific FreeBSD client, instead it runs as a Linux client using the linux_base-8 libraries from the ports collection. Under straight linux redhat, CRUX, gentoo it takes about 13hours on a P4C 3.0Ghz for complete a gromacs WU, the same hardware running either FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE or 5.1-RELEASE is takes about 26hours to do the same task. The only think I have noticed is that under Linux the client says it's using the SSE instructions, where under FreeBSD and the linux_base-8 libraries it does not say that. The cleint runs multi threaded under Linux or FreeBSD. I have also noticed quite a performance difference, though not as extreme, between the OS's in the distributed folding project where there is a native compile for FreeBSD. The benchmark suite says that FreeBSD is spending more time in sys (I/O) releated ativities than Linux but is still takes more hours to get through set of 250 generations than Linux does, the significant figure is the Foldtraj/ Usr time which seems to relate how long it will take to complete a generation. Linux Benchmark P4C 3.0Ghz Summary ------- Usr time Sys time -------- -------- Maketrj 2.670 0.710 Foldtraj 28.930 11.000 FreeBSD Benchmark P4 3.16GHz. Summary ------- Usr time Sys time -------- -------- Maketrj 5.789 0.234 Foldtraj 36.867 1.523 I am curious if there are any performace tweaks for FreeBSD, other than client settings or nice levels, to get more performance out of either Folding@home or Distribute Folding clients? I have asked this question on the respective forums, but the people there are generally not FreeBSD gurus. - Ernie.
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