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Technical white paper

Memory performance on HP

Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations

Performance impact of moving to larger DIMM sizes and

populating fewer memory channels

Table of contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Memory performance in the HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstation ................................................................................... 2

Application/Benchmark performance comparisons ........................................................................................................ 4

HP Z440 comparison results ................................................................................................................................................. 4

HP Z840 comparison results ................................................................................................................................................. 6

Results discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................................. 8

Summary of content (8 pages)

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Technical white paper Memory performance on HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations Performance impact of moving to larger DIMM sizes and populating fewer memory channels Table of contents Introduction............................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Memory performance in the HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstation....................................................................................
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Technical white paper | Memory performance on HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations Introduction This paper looks at the performance impact of moving to larger DIMM sizes in conjunction with populating fewer memory channels, for specific configurations in HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations. As a general rule, memory performance is optimized when all memory channels are populated in a system.
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Technical white paper | Memory performance on HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations Figure 2. Memory bandwidth comparison Channels populated vs. cores accessing memory 4 channels populated STREAM Triad Relative bandwidth 1.20 1.00 1.00 0.48 2 channels populated STREAM Triad 0.40 0.42 1 channels populated STREAM Triad 0.20 0.26 0.80 0.60 0.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0.56 0.
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Technical white paper | Memory performance on HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations As a reference point, figure 3 shows the memory bandwidth relationship between a balanced configuration (all memory channels loaded) and an unbalanced configuration (not all memory channels loaded), both in the lightly threaded case and in the highly threaded case.
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Technical white paper | Memory performance on HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations Figure 5. HP Z440 Media and Entertainment 1.10 Relative performance 1.00 0.95 0.90 0.80 0.70 0.60 0.50 0.40 0.30 GFX CPU Blender SPECapc Maya 2012 Comparison 1 HandBrake SPECwpc Comparison 2 4 x 4 GB DIMMs (16 GB - 4 ch loaded) 2 x 8 GB DIMMs (16 GB - 2 ch loaded) 2 x 4 GB DIMMs (8 GB - 2 ch loaded) 1 x 8 GB DIMM (8 GB - 1 ch loaded) Figure 6. HP Z440 Energy and Life Sciences 1.10 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.91 0.
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Technical white paper | Memory performance on HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations HP Z840 comparison results The Comparison 1 results in figures 7, 8, and 9 below are for 32 GB configurations with 4 channels versus 2 channels loaded per processor. The Comparison 2 results below are for 16 GB configurations with 2 channels versus 1 channel loaded per processor. Results are normalized to the 32 GB, 4 channels loaded per processor configuration.
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Technical white paper | Memory performance on HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations Figure 9. HP Z840 Energy and Life Sciences 1.10 Relative performance 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.84 1.00 0.91 0.82 0.74 0.73 0.70 0.61 0.60 0.50 0.58 0.40 0.40 0.30 1.00 0.88 0.90 0.80 1.
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Technical white paper | Memory performance on HP Z840/Z640/Z440 Workstations Conclusion For the best memory performance, it is necessary to populate all memory channels on the processors. However, there are applications and workloads where the performance impact from populating fewer memory channels will be less apparent.