Abstract
We present a performance evaluation of Pleiades based on the Intel Xeon E5-2670 processor, a fourth-generation eight-core Sandy Bridge architecture, and compare it with the previous third generation Nehalem architecture. Several architectural features have been incorporated in Sandy Bridge: (a) four memory channels as opposed to three in Nehalem; (b) memory speed increased from 1333 MHz to 1600 MHz; (c) ring to connect on-chip L3 cache with cores, system agent, memory controller, and QPI agent and I/O controller to increase the scalability; (d) new AVX unit with wider vector registers of 256 bit; (e) integration of PCI-Express 3.0 controllers into the I/O subsystem on chip; (f) new Turbo Boost version 2.0 where base frequency of processor increased from 2.6 to 3.2 GHz; and (g) QPI link rate from 6.4 to 8 GT/s and two QPI links to second socket. We critically evaluate these new features using several low-level benchmarks, and four full-scale scientific and engineering applications.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Saini, S., Naraikin, A., Biswas, R., Barkai, D., Sandstrom, T.: Early performance evaluation of a “Nehalem” cluster using scientific and engineering applications. In: Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Conference on High Performance Computing, SC 2009, Portland, Oregon, USA, November 14-20 (2009)
Saini, S., Jin, H., Hood, R., Barker, D., Mehrotra, P., Biswas, R.: The impact of hyper-threading on processor resource utilization in production applications. In: 8th International Conference on High Performance Computing, HiPC 2011, Bengaluru, India, December 18-21 (2011)
Intel Xeon Benchmark - Intel.com, www.intel.com/Xeon
Texas Advanced Computing Center – Stampede, www.tacc.utexas.edu/stampede
NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC), https://www2.cisl.ucar.edu/resources/yellowstone/hardware
HPC Challenge Benchmarks, http://icl.cs.utk.edu/hpcc/
Schöne, R., Hackenberg, D., Molka, D.: Memory performance at reduced CPU clock speeds: an analysis of current x86_64 processors. In: Proceedings of the 2012 USENIX Conference on Power-Aware Computing and Systems (HotPower 2012), Hollywood, USA, October 7 (2012), http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2387869.2387878
NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB), http://www.nas.nasa.gov/publications/npb.html
OVERFLOW, http://aaac.larc.nasa.gov/~buning/
Mavriplis, D.J., Aftosmis, M.J., Berger, M.: High Resolution Aerospace Applications using the NASA Columbia Supercomputer. In: Proc. ACM/IEEE, SC 2005, Seattle, WA (2005)
M.I.T General Circulation Model (MITgcm), http://mitgcm.org/
Saini, S., Talcott, D., Jespersen, D., Djomehri, J., Jin, H., Biswas, R.: Scientific application-based performance comparison of SGI Altix 4700, IBM POWER5+, and SGI ICE 8200 supercomputers. In: High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC 2008, Austin, Texas, November 15-21 (2008)
Morozov, V., Kumaran, K., Vishwanath, V., Meng, J., Papka, M.E.: Early Experience on the Blue Gene/Q Supercomputing System. In: IEEE IPDPS, Boston, May 20-23 (2013)
Barker, K., Davis, K., Hoisie, A., Kerbyson, D.J., Lang, M., Pakin, S., Sancho, J.C.: Entering the Petaflop Era: The Architecture and Performance of Roadrunner. In: Proceedings of IEEE/ACM Supercomputing, SC 2008, Austin, TX (November 2008)
Barker, K., Hoisie, A., Kerbyson, D.: An Early Performance Analysis of POWER7-IH HPC Systems. In: SC 2011, Seattle, November 12-18 (2011)
Kerbyson, D.J., Barker, K.J., Vishnu, A., Hoisie, A: Comparing the Performance of Blue Gene/Q with Leading Cray XE6 and InfiniBand Systems. In: ICPADS 2012, pp. 556–563 (2012)
Alam, S., Barrett, R., Bast, M., Fahey, M., Kuehn, J., McCurdy, C., Rogers, J., Roth, P., Sankaran, R., Vetter, J., Worley, P., Yu, W.: Early Evaluation of IBM BlueGene/P. In: Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC 2008, Austin, TX, November 15-21 (2008)
Alam, S.R., Barrett, R.F., Fahey, M.R., Kuehn, J.A., Messer, O.E., Mills, R.T., Roth, P.C., Vetter, J.S., Worley, P.H.: An Evaluation of the ORNL Cray XT3. International Journal for High Performance Computer Applications 22, 52–80 (2008)
PMU Performance Monitoring PerfMon | Intel® Developer Zone software.intel.com/en-us/tags/18842
Intel® Architecture Instruction Set Extensions Programming Reference, 319433-014 (August 2012) http://software.intel.com/en-us/avx
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Saini, S., Chang, J., Jin, H. (2014). Performance Evaluation of the Intel Sandy Bridge Based NASA Pleiades Using Scientific and Engineering Applications. In: Jarvis, S., Wright, S., Hammond, S. (eds) High Performance Computing Systems. Performance Modeling, Benchmarking and Simulation. PMBS 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8551. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10214-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10214-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-10213-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-10214-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)