AMD Ryzen Threadripper

[Pieclops]

Dennis & Adam,
Thank you for your comments.
Any tech that helps speed up processing is always welcome in this game...

Cheers Jason, I'm in the same boat - anything that speeds up workstation tasks or makes the tech cheaper via competition is a big plus in my books!

Also just spotted this article published today which I thought would be relevant in this thread, as Threadripper 1950X is rated best overall choice for workstation CPU:

Best CPUs for Workstations: 2017
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11891/be ... tions-2017

I had an interesting conversation with the Product Manager of a major 3d scanning software vendor at EWR while waiting to board the flight to Berlin to attend InterGeo2017. He told me that they had problems running their software on an AMD Ryzen to test it out. He felt that maybe the problems with the software and hardware were because of more cores and not enough RAM for each core to function like the software expected.

sometimes the BIOS will allow you to limit the
number of cores to use.

A way to check if "more cores and not enough RAM for each core"
was the problem.

Agreed, if only to test this is the issue - most BIOS' will allow you to disable Simultaneous Multithreading so the 16 cores / 32 threads just runs as 16 cores / 16 threads during operation. I remember some folk had achieved marginally better results in gaming benchmarks by doing this too, mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of games don't utilise more than ~4 - 8 cores well (and I think the threads were scheduled quicker without it, hence the boost). Would be interesting to see if he gets the same issue with Intel's new higher core-count lineup.

[SAttaya]

mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of games don't utilise more than ~4 - 8 cores well

also consider L1 & L2 caches which are both per core
possible - less core flushing if not hyperthreaded

[dhirota]

Where are the Ryzen users with 2950X and X399-A or X399-E motherboards?
Or did I miss the detailed research on LSF? I decided it was better to build
Intel 8700K OC systems running W7SP1 then with W10, which is too easy.

Ryzen 2950X
16 cores/32 threads
4.4 GHz max
40MB cache

$900 each on Amazon
ASUS MB for $350 on Amazon
with 8 DDR4 RAM slots should get you to 128GB

[smacl]

I'm liking the look of the Ryzen 2 at 32 cores and 64 threads coming in at €2,050 as the sweet spot for price/performance. As a software developer, yes you often need more ram per core to get good performance. Basically, for many divide and conquer style algorithms, each thread will have a thread local copy of the data to avoid contention, and then merge once the work is done. The rate at which scanners are collecting data, e.g. 2 million points per second, is also worth considering as most spatial algorithms (e.g. meshing) have higher than linear orders of complexity. So for a function that 10 seconds for a million points will take more than 20 seconds for 2 million points, some times many multiples more. Some spatial algorithms are also difficult to efficiently multi-thread so single core performance is also still very important. We're also slowly starting to see offloading of compute intensive non-graphic algorithms to the GPU, via the likes of OpenCL, so those good graphics cards may well start paying for themselves again in the near future.

Anyhoo, dev ramblings aside, liking the new AMD kit.

[Tookie]

I would be wary of the threadripper 2990WX it has an odd configuration and half the cores don't have direct access to memory. It can struggle in memory intensive applications and is outperformed in these scenarios by the 2950X which is only 16 cores .

I wonder if I can convince one of the review sites to run some scan data..

[smacl]

I would be wary of the threadripper 2990WX it has an odd configuration and half the cores don't have direct access to memory. It can struggle in memory intensive applications and is outperformed in these scenarios by the 2950X which is only 16 cores .

I wonder if I can convince one of the review sites to run some scan data..

Like all these things, you really have to test it against a variety of real world workflows to see how it stacks up. Even with lower end kit it is well worth leaving task manager up to see if all cores are in use most of the time. If not, more cores won't speed things up, single thread performance is the bottleneck. That said, a lot of geospatial routines are compute intensive as much as memory intensive, so I'd guess the 2990WX would be a very good candidate for scan data. If you manage to wangle one on loan, do let us know how you get on

[dhirota]

What is surprising that after one year from the announcement of the AMD Ryzen 1950X or any of the other AMD Ryzen models there are
not many, if any, software vendors indicating that their software will run at higher performance with AMD Ryzen than with Intel processors and no one posting anything on this thread with trials.

If it does, it has not been published widely here at LSF.

[ericguizzetti]

BIG time want...




https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... _BwE&smp=y

[dhirota]

Please find out if Cyclone 9.3 is running on an AMD Ryzen platform?

[Jason Warren]

BIG time want...