PETSc performance on Intel core 2 duo

[Satish Balay]

Ideally you'll have to benchmark the correct code to determine the
differences in performance between different architectures.

We have some 'sequential' performance numbers for a sample test case
in src/benchmarks/results/performance_cfd_2_10. Also anyone can run
this benchmark on the hardware they are evaluating - with the options
mentioned in this file [the datafiles are at
ftp://ftp.mcs.anl.gov/pub/petsc/matrices]

With sparse computations, we generally see that the limiting factor is
memory bandwidth. So a core-2-duo desktop could have 21GB/s shared
[first generation has lower value?]  between 4 procs. If this is
correct than I would expect it to provide pretty good performance..

Satish

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, Aron Ahmadia wrote:

> Hi Ben,
> 
> These are some really difficult questions to answer quickly.  PETSc
> performance is dependent on a large variety of factors, from the
> architecture of your computer to the layout of your network to how much RAM
> you have, most importantly the problem you are trying to solve.
> 
> I have an Intel Core Duo laptop as well as a dual-processor Intel Core 2 Duo
> workstation here at Columbia, I'd be happy to benchmark some of your code
> for you if it will help you decide on the upgrade.
> 
> Thanks,
> ~Aron
> 
> On 1/23/07, Ben Tay <zonexo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Intel's new processor core 2 duo (c2d) have been getting pretty good
> > reviews. How well is PETSc performance on the c2d?
> > 
> > I wonder how much speed improvement will I get if I upgrade from my
> > current Athlon XP 2400+ at 2200mhz. Also the speed improvement over my
> > school's xeon 3.06ghz server.
> > 
> > Is there any place where I can get or run some benchmark to get a rough
> > comparison?
> > 
> > Btw, how important is L1/L2 cache impact on PETSc's performance? e.g. 2Mb
> > vs 4 Mb L2 cache different.
> > 
> > Thank you.
> > 
>