White Papers

ManualsBrandsDell ManualsConverged InfrastructureHigh Performance Computing Solution Resources

HPC Performance Comparison

of Intel Xeon E5-2600 and E5-

2600 v2 Series Processors

by Ranga Balimidi, Ishan Singh, and Rafi Ikbal

Dell recently updated the 12

generation PowerEdge server line with the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 series processors. In

this blog we compare the performance of the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 processors against the previous E5-2600 series

processors across a variety of HPC benchmarks and applications. We also compare the performance of 1600MT/s

DIMMs with 1866MT/s DIMMs; 1866MT/s is only supported with Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 series processors. Intel Xeon

E5-2600 v2 series processors are supported on Dell PowerEdge R620, R720, M620, C6220 II, C8220 and

C8220x platforms with the latest firmware and BIOS updates.

Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processors use a 32 nanometer based manufacturing process, CPU on planar double-

gate transistors. They fall under the tock process of Intel’s tick-tock model of development and included a new

microarchitecture (codenamed Sandy Bridge) to replace the Intel Xeon 5500 series processors that were built on the

architecture code named Nehalem.

Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 series processors (codenamed Ivy Bridge) are based on the 22 nm manufacturing process.

There is a die shrink, known as the "tick" step of Intel’s tick-tock model and is based on 3D tri-gate transistors.

To maintain consistency across the server configurations having Intel Xeon E5-2695 v2 and Intel Xeon E5-2665

processors, we have used processors of the same frequency and wattage across both processor

families.

Cluster Configuration

Hardware

Server Model PowerEd

e R620

Processors Dual Intel Xeon E5-2665

2.4GHz (8 cores) 115W

Dual Intel Xeon E5-2695 v2

2.4GHz (12 cores) 115W

Total 16 cores per serve

Total 24 cores per serve

Memory 128GB memory, total per server

Summary of content (6 pages)

PAGE 1
HPC Performance Comparison of Intel Xeon E5-2600 and E52600 v2 Series Processors by Ranga Balimidi, Ishan Singh, and Rafi Ikbal Dell recently updated the 12th generation PowerEdge server line with the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 series processors. In this blog we compare the performance of the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 processors against the previous E5-2600 series processors across a variety of HPC benchmarks and applications.
PAGE 2
Interconnect Operating System Cluster Software OFED Intel Compiler Intel MPI BIOS BIOS Settings HPL Stream NAS Parallel Benchmarks WRF Configuration - 1-16GB Dual Rank DDR3 RDIMM per channel (8 * 1600MT/s 16GB DIMMs or 8 * 1866MT/s 16GB DIMMs) Mellanox InfiniBand - ConnectX3 FDR connected back-to-back Software Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 (kernel version 2.6.32-358.el6 x86_64) Bright Cluster Manager 6.1 Mellanox OFED 2.0.3 Version 14.0.0 Version 4.1 Version 2.0.
PAGE 3
The NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) is a set of benchmarks targeting performance evaluation of highly parallel supercomputers. LU: Solves a synthetic system of nonlinear PDEs using three different algorithms involving block tri-diagonal, scalar penta-diagonal and symmetric successive over-relaxation (SSOR) solver kernels, respectively. EP: Generate independent Gaussian random deviates using the Marsaglia polar method.
PAGE 4
HPL yielded 1.53x sustained performance on IVB-24c as compared to SB-16c. This is primarily due to the increase in the number of cores. NPB and WRF yielded up to ~7 – 10% improvement when executed on 16 cores on Intel Xeon E5-2695 v2 when compared to SB-16c. WRF performs 22% better with IVB-24c when compared to SB-16c; NPB-EP shows ~38% improvement with IVB-24c when compared to SB-16c.
PAGE 5
The following graph shows single node performance gains with the Intel Xeon E5-2600 V2 series when compared to then E5-2600 series processors plotted as IVB-48c and SB-32c respectively. Since E5-2600 has 8 cores per socket compared to 12 cores in Intel Xeon E5-2600 V2, one set of results was taken with four cores of Intel Xeon E5-2600 V2 shut down through BIOS and it is plotted as IVB-32c.
PAGE 6
The graph compares the memory bandwidth of the E5-2600 v2 processor to its predecessor, the E5-2600. With E52600, the maximum supported memory speed is 1600MT/s. With E5-2600 v2, that maximum is 1866MT/s. We’ve compared 1600MT/s DIMMs for SB-16c and IVB-24c, and also plotted the improved memory bandwidth with 1866MT/s on IVB-24c. The IVB-24c test shows up ~15% increase in memory bandwidth with 1866MT/s DIMMs when compared to IVB-24c with 1600MT/s DIMMs due to the higher frequency of the 1866MT/s DIMMs.