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Subject: Re: Hyperthreading question on duals, I know it's bad but why?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 11:47:49 09/17/03

Go up one level in this thread


On September 17, 2003 at 12:11:59, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On September 17, 2003 at 11:22:58, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On September 16, 2003 at 22:30:47, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On September 15, 2003 at 14:16:38, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On September 15, 2003 at 13:18:28, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On September 14, 2003 at 12:52:54, Sietel Monic wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>My friend runs dual proccessors using hyperthreading so gets 4 threads, I know
>>>>>>this is bad for chess. Just dont know why
>>>>>
>>>>>This is ok. Running with 2 threads on a dual processor with hyperthreading
>>>>>enabled is _not_, unless you're running Linux 2.4.x or Windows Server 2003.
>>>
>>>You sure of this bob?
>>
>>I am certain.  I have duals all over the place, running 2.4.20 and 2.4.21 (I
>
>Does that say 2.4.20-NUMA

I don't compile with NUMA kernel option because I don't have any NUMA
boxes.  However, the -NUMA doesn't mean anything.  You can compile a NUMA
kernel and not have the -NUMA extension, and vice-versa...


>
>or does it only say 2.4.20 x86 ?
>
>But in general i agree. i find the linux OS as a whole a joke at NUMA machines.
>And kernel 2.6 won't be much better either i bet.

As I said before, there is presently very little demand for NUMA linux
support.  As the demand grows, the O/S sophistication will grow with it,
just as SMP did.  Original Linux had no SMP support either.  Until the demand
was formed as cheap duals and sorta-cheap quads came along later.

Once the opteron is readily availble in cheaper configurations, NUMA support
will take off...


>
>>did say I had not tested 2.4.22 yet).  Also, your question is in the wrong
>>place.  I didn't write the above.  GCP did.  I responded to it (the response
>>appears below)..
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>QUADopteron:/diep/latency # uname -a
>>>Linux QUADopteron 2.4.19-NUMA #3 SMP Wed Jul 2 18:34:37 CDT 2003 x86_64 unknown
>>>
>>>Perhaps all you need is a special extension to the kernel.
>
>>We are talking about hyper-threading.  4 logical processors with two real
>>processors.  What are you talking about?   The opteron is not hyper-threaded.
>>The issue is that the O/S has to recognize that with only two runnable processes
>>on a dual-cpu hyper-threaded machine, it needs to run each process on a
>>different physical processor for max performance, rather than running both on
>>two logical processors that are on the same physical processor, which would
>>run much slower.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>Linux 2.4.x won't cut it either.  I use 2.4.21 and it is _not_ SMT-aware.  IE
>>>>it will certainly recognize 4 processors, but it doesn't realize that if there
>>>>are just two computational tasks to run, they should be run on two physical
>>>>processors.  2.4 just runs them on any two logical processors.  When the two
>>>>logical processors are on one physical processor, this performs poorly.  Ingo
>>>>Molnar did a scheduler that addresses this (or maybe Rick did it).  And it works
>>>>well (it has two run queues, one for each physical procesor, rather than four,
>>>>one for each logical processor.)  But that isn't in mainstream 2.4 yet (I have
>>>>not looked at 2.4.22 closely so it _could_ be there).
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>--
>>>>>GCP



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