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Subject: Re: Odd hyperthreading behavior

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:44:03 10/04/03

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On October 04, 2003 at 21:09:23, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On October 04, 2003 at 21:00:34, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>
>>I had the chance to run my program on a dual P4 Xeon (with hyperthreading).
>
>which OS and what version number of the os and what release number?
>
>pretty crucial.
>
>>First off, there have been some involved arguments about the design and
>>performance of hyperthreading on this board in the past. I'd like to settle one
>>argument, namely that single threaded programs do not slow down when
>>hyperthreading is on. Actually, my program did slow down by 1.3% but I think
>>this is marginal and easily attributed to the scheduler, not hyperthreading.
>>
>>The odd part is that hyperthreading DOES slow down my program when running 2
>>threads. With HT off, my program searches 90% more NPS with a 2nd thread. With
>
>>HT on, it only searches 53% more NPS. The idle time reported by each thread is
>>low and the nodes are split evenly, so it seems both processors are slowed down
>>equally. What must be happening is that HT is activated some (or all?) of the
>>time while searching but I have no idea what might be activating it.
>>
>>Also odd is that HT seems to be decreasing the efficiency of the search. With HT
>>off, my program's time-to-ply is 64% faster with 2 threads but with HT on, it's
>>only 21% faster. The time-to-ply:NPS ratios are 0.86 and 0.79 respectively.
>>
>>Running 4 threads with HT on results in a 15% NPS/6% time-to-ply speedup over 2
>>threads.
>>
>>In other words, there's no contest between running 2 threads (HT off) vs.
>>running 4 threads (HT on). The former wins hands down for my program.
>>
>>-Tom
>
>Your thing is searching parallel nowadays and we do talk about a chessprogram
>here?
>
>Doesn't take away that it is not easy to profit from HT.
>
>Basically HT only works well at intel test machines it seems.
>
>those do HT a lot better than non-test machines.
>
>it is confirmed again in www.aceshardware.com
>
>25% speedup (in nodes a second) for diep is just too much (single P4 EE 3.4Ghz)
>i bet production machines that we can buy in the shops soon won't show at single
>cpu P4 EE 3.4Ghz a speedup of 25% like aceshardware.com has tested. Anyway i
>kept the executable to proof my guess there in the future when the p4 ee is
>released or when i can run at a P4 3.2Ghz C (also showed 25% speedup in nps
>thanks to HT for current diep version).
>
>best regards,
>vincent


Several have run this test with Crafty.  SMT on is 20-30% faster in NPS for
my program, on my dual 2.8, which is not a "test machine".  Eugene posted
similar numbers for a dual he has.  Others have also reproduced this with
no problems.





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