Please take me to school AMD Win7 vs Linux
Just wanted to pick some brains. I'm running eon2 right now on 4 AMD rigs, 3-Phenoms and 1-FX8150 Bulldozer. The Phenoms aren't too bad, speed wise, the Bulldozer really sucks. In any case, I have VirtualBox and Linux 10.0.4 on 2 of the boxes. I started running eon Linux, under the VM and here's what I'm seeing. The times are pretty consistent.
Under Win7 and the FX-8150
10 Jan 2013 21:59:50 UTC 10 Jan 2013 22:49:56 UTC Completed and validated 1,468.43 1,447.74 2.74 eOn Client v4.20
Under Linux and VirtualBox the FX-8150
11 Jan 2013 1:02:01 UTC 11 Jan 2013 1:11:28 UTC Completed and validated 201.99 200.18 2.71 eOn Client v4.20
Cut wu time by 1260 seconds
Under Win7 and 1035t
Jan 2013 23:34:42 UTC 11 Jan 2013 0:01:04 UTC Completed and validated 666.15 630.20 2.69 eOn Client v4.20
Under Linux and VirtualBox 1035t
11 Jan 2013 1:04:14 UTC 11 Jan 2013 1:18:16 UTC Completed and validated 261.99 261.15 2.69 eOn Client v4.20
Cut wu times by 400 seconds.
So I guess my question is this...are all cpu projects (that have both applications) faster under Linux or did I just happen to find one that was? Here are the applications available.
Linux running on an AMD x86_64 or Intel EM64T CPU
Windows client for 32 bit and 64 bit CPUs
According to WuProp there is no data for Win7 64 on eon2, which makes me wonder if Win7 runs the 32 bit application. Could that be what's causing the slower work times? If so, it would really pay me to start looking at the applications available. If Win7 doesn't have a 64 bit app and Linux does I presume it would run faster under the VM. Am I thinking about this correctly?
Re: Please take me to school AMD Win7 vs Linux
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Al McAdams
Just wanted to pick some brains. I'm running eon2 right now on 4 AMD rigs, 3-Phenoms and 1-FX8150 Bulldozer. The Phenoms aren't too bad, speed wise, the Bulldozer really sucks. In any case, I have VirtualBox and Linux 10.0.4 on 2 of the boxes. I started running eon Linux, under the VM and here's what I'm seeing. The times are pretty consistent.
Under Win7 and the FX-8150
10 Jan 2013 21:59:50 UTC 10 Jan 2013 22:49:56 UTC Completed and validated 1,468.43 1,447.74 2.74 eOn Client v4.20
Under Linux and VirtualBox the FX-8150
11 Jan 2013 1:02:01 UTC 11 Jan 2013 1:11:28 UTC Completed and validated 201.99 200.18 2.71 eOn Client v4.20
Cut wu time by 1260 seconds
Under Win7 and 1035t
Jan 2013 23:34:42 UTC 11 Jan 2013 0:01:04 UTC Completed and validated 666.15 630.20 2.69 eOn Client v4.20
Under Linux and VirtualBox 1035t
11 Jan 2013 1:04:14 UTC 11 Jan 2013 1:18:16 UTC Completed and validated 261.99 261.15 2.69 eOn Client v4.20
Cut wu times by 400 seconds.
So I guess my question is this...are all cpu projects (that have both applications) faster under Linux or did I just happen to find one that was? Here are the applications available.
Linux running on an AMD x86_64 or Intel EM64T CPU
Windows client for 32 bit and 64 bit CPUs
According to WuProp there is no data for Win7 64 on eon2, which makes me wonder if Win7 runs the 32 bit application. Could that be what's causing the slower work times? If so, it would really pay me to start looking at the applications available. If Win7 doesn't have a 64 bit app and Linux does I presume it would run faster under the VM. Am I thinking about this correctly?
Pretty much so. In almost every case, a true 64bit Science App will run better than a 32bit App being run in a 64bit environment. Even with minimal effort at optimization on the Projects part, most compilers will do things in better ways if told the 64bit extensions can be used. And it's not only Linux 64. It just happens that some of the base science apps these projects are simply writing "wrappers" for have 64bit Linux versions compiled and available for them to leverage, while the Windows version is 32bit only. Not sure why that's so tough, but it does seem to be the case.
Re: Please take me to school AMD Win7 vs Linux
32 vs 64 bit times are like comparing apples and oranges. Even if the CPU supports 64 bits, if the OS is running in 32 bits, all 64 bit operations have to be emulated. For Collatz, it takes more than twice as long even when using x86 intrinsics which have routines that can calculate 64-bit multiplication, etc.
From my experience, speed has more to do with the compiler than the platform. The GCC compiler for Linux is OK, but usually slower than the Microsoft compiler on Windows. Intel's compiler is faster for both Linux and Windows, but only when running an Intel CPU. When running an AMD CPU, it is slower whether by choice or design.
If there are assembly language routines in addition to the C code, that often speeds things up, but the assembly is slightly different in GCC than Microsoft so it requires multiple versions of the same code.
Some libraries such as GMP don't have 64-bit versions for Windows, so if the project uses them, only 32-bit Windows apps will be available unless they use MPIR instead (a branch of GMP code specifically made for 64-bit Windows).
Since GCC is free, it tends to be the compiler of choice, especially for projects with limited budgets. Microsoft has a free version of their Visual Studio developer tools, but they don't have all the features of the paid version. Intel's compiler is the most expensive. While it does a great job, unless you already own a license, spending thousands of dollars for a compiler when GCC is free is pretty hard to justify for the 1-2% speed difference.
For GPU apps, it has more to do with the drivers than the compiler. Linux has lagged behind Windows for AMD. nVidia actually has more tools for Linux than Windows, but the performance is about the same. So far, all GPU apps are 32-bit since the GPUs are 32-bit. They may be compiled as native 64-bit, but the GPU code is still 32-bit. I expect that to change within the next year or so.
Re: Please take me to school AMD Win7 vs Linux
As an old eon cruncher (command line version) the client always have been faster on linux systems.
Carlos
Re: Please take me to school AMD Win7 vs Linux
@Slicker - I'll be honest, I almost understood some of that. :o Since we don't see how it was compiled, just the available applications, I guess I'll just test projects as I go along to see which is faster. Thanks for the explanation.
Re: Please take me to school AMD Win7 vs Linux
WUprop@home has stats by CPU so you don't have to run each to find out. Given the same CPU, it shows each OS and the times. For example:
http://wuprop.boinc-af.org/results/d...rojet&sort=asc
Re: Please take me to school AMD Win7 vs Linux
