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Benchmarks, Part 2
Sysbench CPU
Sysbench is a widely used suite that characterizes CPU, memory, file I/O, mutex, and MySQL performance. We focus on the CPU test, which measures the amount of time required to verify prime numbers in both single- and multi-threaded workloads.
It isn't a surprise to see the Platinum 8176 take a big lead in the multi-threaded test, which highlights the gains available when you ramp up core count.
In the single-threaded test, the older platforms fall in line based on clock rate. The 8176 has a slight Turbo Boost advantage over the other contenders, which helps boost performance in lightly threaded tasks.
Stream
Stream is a relatively simple test developed by Dr. John D. McCalpin. It measures the sustainable memory throughput of a given system in MB/s.
The memory tests reveal an astounding throughput advantage favoring Intel's Platinum 8176. The combination of more memory channels at a higher data rate enables amazing results. That level of throughput, along with increased memory capacity, will enable big performance advantages in RAM-bound workloads, such as in-memory databases.
C-Ray 1.1
C-Ray is a ray tracing benchmark designed to reside entirely inside of a CPU's cache, thus eliminating RAM and disk I/O overhead during the measurement window. The test focuses purely on floating-point performance during rendering, and it runs on multiple threads.
The ray tracing workload scales nicely based on core count. Clock rate clearly plays a role too, but the Platinum 8176 primarily leverages its multi-threaded advantage to take a large lead.
Most ray tracing applications require copious amounts of system memory, which pins this type of workload to CPUs more than graphics hardware. Thus, the Platinum series' support for up to 1.5TB of DDR4-2666 is a boon indeed.
7-Zip
7-Zip is open source software that measures compression and decompression performance, which can be a key capability for storage and networking applications.
As service contracts expire, most enterprises will move up from older Ivy Bridge, Haswell, and Broadwell platforms to the Platinum series. This convincing set of benchmarks highlights yet another aspect of day-to-day operations that will experience boosted performance.
HardInfo
HardInfo provides granular system information, and includes a suite of benchmarks that measure CPU performance. It's easily accessible and comes as a standard component in many Ubuntu desktop systems. We include these tests because they allow our Linux brethren to easily run comparison data.
Overall, the Platinum 8176 performs to our expectations, with the notable exception of the FPU ray tracing benchmark. Intel informs us that some applications will suffer mesh-imposed performance penalties until the software ecosystem adjusts, but we've only found the altered architecture to affect a few enterprise-class benchmarks. We suspect we can add this specific title to the list of applications that might see better performance after optimizations.
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