Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Odd hyperthreading behavior

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 11:45:00 10/05/03

Go up one level in this thread


On October 05, 2003 at 13:44:15, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On October 04, 2003 at 23:44:03, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>Not really, all reports i saw here from non-Hyatt and non-Nalimov machines
>report for the same versions 10-15% for crafty.

And 10%-15% is _drastically_ different than 20%, right?

learn some math.

this varies significantly, on the same machine...





This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.