15
Test Report December 2002 For Dell TM Computer Corporation. Executive Summary Today we see the widespread use of engineering/technical workstations to support complex applications in design, analysis, finance, digital content creation and software development. Companies deploying this technology understand that improvements in the performance of these tools can help to shorten product or project design cycles, which can contribute to lowering of costs and/or provide a competitive time to market advantage. As a result, designers, engineers and project managers alike continue to search for opportunities to boost the system and application performance. One area to consider for its potential to enhance workstation performance is the addition of a second processor on workstations with dual processor capability. Comparative Study of Single vs. Dual Processor System Inside: Test Methodology Test Environment Test Results About NSTL Key Findings: * The Dual Intel® Xeon™ processor-based system out performed the Single Intel® Xeon™ processor-based system for all benchmarks. *The Dual processor system displayed up to a 40% increase over the Single processor system for the Ansys benchmark * The results show that the increase in the time saved by using a dual processor system is proportional to the increase in the complexity of the models for the Nastran benchmark. NSTL was contracted by Dell Computer Corporation to assess the performance advantage of a dual Intel® Xeon™ processor based system vs the same system equipped with a single processor. In order to determine the performance of each system, NSTL conducted a series of benchmark tests employing workstation class applications. The tests that were conducted comprised of the following applications and benchmarks: Adobe® Photoshop®, Ansys®, Nastran®, BAPCo® SYSmark®, Linpack, Fluent and SPEC CPU2000. Detailed information on each benchmark can be found in the Results section. All benchmarks were run on a clean system using the same image file. The system configuration was changed by setting the NUMPROC parameter in the boot.ini file. The dual processor workstation was configured with two Xeon processors with Intel ® NetBurst TM microarchitecture. The system contained 2 GB of ECC Memory with two 36 GB SCSI drives configured as one RAID 0 logical drive. The complete system configuration can be found in the Test Environment section. NSTL found that for applications that can utilize both processors, the dual configuration performed better than the single processor system. The SPECcpu benchmark, which measures CPU performance, displayed a 79% increase in the performance of the dual processor system over the single processor system. The Ansys benchmark performs linear and transient structural analysis on real-world models. This benchmark also showed a significant increase in performance by the dual system. The increase ranged from 22% up to 40% for the different sections of the benchmark. Adobe Photoshop also performed better on the dual processor system. The dual processor system finished an average of ten minutes faster than the single processor system on a mix of typical Photoshop operations. The Linpack benchmark measures the execution rate in MFLOPs (millions of floating point operations per second). NSTL testing showed that the dual processor system provides a 38% increase in performance over the single processor system. The increase in performance was proportional to the increase in the size of the matrices. The Fluent benchmark, which performs complex calculations to obtain flow rates for various models, showed a significant increase in performance when run on the dual processor configuration. The performance increases ranged from 27% to as high as 54% better on the dual processor system. The final benchmark test NSTL conducted was the Sysmark benchmark which measures performance using a mix of applications in a multitasking environment. The results of the benchmark show that adding a second processor to the test system in multitasking environments improved the performance of office applications by 8% and internet content creation by 24%. The NSTL testing showed that for all the benchmarks, the dual processor configuration performed much better then the single processor configuration.

Test Report

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Test Report

Test Report December 2002

Dell TM Corp

Executive Summary

Compa

SinglProces

Inside: Test MTest ETest RAbout

Key Finding

* The Dual processor-bperformed tXeon™ prosystem for a

*The Dual pdisplayed upover the Sinsystem for tbenchmark

* The resultincrease in using a duais proportioin the compfor the Nast

For Computer oration.

Today we see the widespread use of engineering/technical workstations to support complex applications in design, analysis, finance, digital content creation and software development. Companies deploying this technology understand that improvements in the performance of these tools can help to shorten product or project design cycles, which can contribute to lowering of costs and/or provide a competitive time to market advantage. As a result, designers, engineers and project managers alike continue to search for opportunities to boost the system and application performance. One area to consider for its potential to enhance workstation performance is the addition of a second processor on workstations with dual processor capability.

rative Study of

e vs. Dual sor System

ethodology nvironment esults NSTL

s:

Intel® Xeon™ ased system out he Single Intel® cessor-based ll benchmarks.

rocessor system to a 40% increase

gle processor he Ansys

s show that the the time saved by l processor system nal to the increase lexity of the models ran benchmark.

NSTL was contracted by Dell Computer Corporation to assess the performance advantage of a dual Intel® Xeon™ processor based system vs the same system equipped with a single processor. In order to determine the performance of each system, NSTL conducted a series of benchmark tests employing workstation class applications. The tests that were conducted comprised of the following applications and benchmarks: Adobe® Photoshop®, Ansys®, Nastran®, BAPCo® SYSmark®, Linpack, Fluent and SPEC CPU2000. Detailed information on each benchmark can be found in the Results section.

All benchmarks were run on a clean system using the same image file. The system configuration was changed by setting the NUMPROC parameter in the boot.ini file. The dual processor workstation was configured with two Xeon processors with Intel® NetBurstTM microarchitecture. The system contained 2 GB of ECC Memory with two 36 GB SCSI drives configured as one RAID 0 logical drive. The complete system configuration can be found in the Test Environment section.

NSTL found that for applications that can utilize both processors, the dual configuration performed better than the single processor system. The SPECcpu benchmark, which measures CPU performance, displayed a 79% increase in the performance of the dual processor system over the single processor system. The Ansys benchmark performs linear and transient structural analysis on real-world models. This benchmark also showed a significant increase in performance by the dual system. The increase ranged from 22% up to 40% for the different sections of the benchmark. Adobe Photoshop also performed better on the dual processor system. The dual processor system finished an average of ten minutes faster than the single processor system on a mix of typical Photoshop operations. The Linpack benchmark measures the execution rate in MFLOPs (millions of floating point operations per second). NSTL testing showed that the dual processor system provides a 38% increase in performance over the single processor system. The increase in performance was proportional to the increase in the size of the matrices. The Fluent benchmark, which performs complex calculations to obtain flow rates for various models, showed a significant increase in performance when run on the dual processor configuration. The performance increases ranged from 27% to as high as 54% better on the dual processor system. The final benchmark test NSTL conducted was the Sysmark benchmark which measures performance using a mix of applications in a multitasking environment. The results of the benchmark show that adding a second processor to the test system in multitasking environments improved the performance of office applications by 8% and internet content creation by 24%. The NSTL testing showed that for all the benchmarks, the dual processor configuration performed much better then the single processor configuration.

Page 2: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 2

Test Methodology NSTL was provided the methodology to run each benchmark. The system was imaged before any testing was conducted to ensure that the file system was consistent throughout the testing. To change the configuration of the system from a Dual processor system to a single, the boot.ini file was edited using the /NUMPROC parameter.

All applications and benchmarks were installed with default settings. Step by step procedures were given to NSTL by Dell, including all software and benchmarks needed to perform the testing.

The Ansys benchmark was installed, by first installing the Ansys application. The Dell system was also setup as the Flexlm license server in both configurations. The Ansys57 benchmark, which can be obtained from the Ansys website, was extracted to its default location. For the single processor system, NSTL ran the ANSYS57bench_NP1.bat. ANSYS57bench_NP2.bat was run for the dual processor system. The benchmark was run three times for both configurations. Each system was rebooted between each run.

The SPECcpu benchmark was loaded onto a clean system, and then run with the following commands:

runspec -c dell.cpu2000.ic501.p4.15jan2002.cfg -r -u1 -Tall all (for the single processor setup compared to the dual system)

runspec -c dell.cpu2000.ic501.p4.15jan2002.cfg -r -u2 -Tall all (for the dual processor setup)

More information on this benchmark can be found at http://www.spec.org.

The version of the Linpack benchmark used for the comparison was compiled with the Intel C compiler. The input parameters used were the number of tests (4), the problem sizes (1000, 2000, 3000, 4000), the leading dimensions (1000 2008 3000 4008), times to run the test (4, 4, 2, 1), and alignment values (4, 4, 4, 4). The alignment value is given in KB.

The Adobe Photoshop benchmark was created by Dell. After Photoshop was installed, the operations (typical mix of Photoshop operations) were loaded. This ensured that the next time Photoshop was started, the predefined operations were performed. NSTL then ran benchmark using 150 MB and 300 MB files. The Memory and Image Cache was left at the default 50%.

Before installing Sysmark benchmark, Direct X 8 was installed on the system. Then the Sysmark benchmark was installed. NSTL ran an Official Run with 3 Iterations on both the single and dual processor configurations. The system was rebooted after each iteration.

Nastran was installed using default settings. The Flexlm was then installed locally. NSTL was provided with batch files that ran the following Nastran commands:

nastran XXX.dat (for the single processor configuration); where XXX is the model name

nastran XXX.dat nprocessors=2 parallel=2 (for the dual processor configuration); where XXX is the model name

The model names that were used during testing can be found in the Results section.

Page 3: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 3

Test Environment

The Dell Precision 530 was configured with the following hardware:

Processors: Dual/Single Intel® Xeon™ processors at 2.80 GHz

Hard Drive Configuration: 2 x 36 GB 15000 RPM SCSI Drives (Set as 1 logical RAID 0 Drive)

Memory: 2 GB ECC Memory

Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster® Live! ™ PCI card

Video Card: NVIDIA Quadro®4. 900XGL Graphics card

Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Professional

Page 4: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 4

Test Results SPEC CPU2000 Benchmark The SPEC CPU2000 benchmarks are used to measure the performance of the CPU, memory architecture, and compiler code generation. It is split up into two components. The first is the SPECint2000 which contains 12 benchmarks that perform integer computations written in C or C++. The second component is the SPECfp2000 which contains floating-point computations written in Fortran97, Fortran90, and C. The SPECcpu benchmark was loaded onto a clean system, and then run with the following commands:

runspec -c dell.cpu2000.ic501.p4.15jan2002.cfg -r -u1 -Tall all (for the single processor setup compared to the dual system)

runspec -c dell.cpu2000.ic501.p4.15jan2002.cfg -r -u2 -Tall all (for the dual processor setup)

The configuration file used dell.cpu2000.ic501.p4.15jan2002.cfg was provided by Dell. The –u parameter specifies the number of users. The Tall tells the benchmark to run both the peak and base tests. The all parameter causes the benchmark to perform both the floating point and integer calculations. Table 1 displays the benchmarks that comprise the SPECint2000 benchmark as well as the Peak Ratio scores from the tests. The Peak Ratio allows the use of all compiler options to reduce time as much as possible.

Benchmark Language Category Peak Ratio for the Single Processor

Peak Ratio for the Dual Processor

164.gzip C Compression 12.2 24.2 175.vpr C FPGA Circuit Placement and Routing 5.83 10.00 176.gcc C C Programming Language Compiler 11.9 19.3 181.mcf C Combinatorial Optimization 6.46 8.39

186.crafty C Game Playing: Chess 11.1 22.1 197.parser C Word Processing 10.5 19.6 252.eon C++ Computer Visualization 17.7 35.3

253.perlbmk C PERL Programming Language 14.8 29.3 254.gap C Group Theory, Interpreter 13.6 24.4

255.vortex C Object-oriented Database 16.5 30.7 256.bzip2 C Compression 8.16 14.1 300.twolf C Place and Route Simulator 8.34 14.7

SPECint_rate 10.8 19.3 Table 1 displays the components of the SPECint2000 Benchmark

The SPECint_rate for the dual processor setup was found to be 19.3, and the SPECint_rate for the single processor configuration was found to be 10.8. This shows that the dual processor configuration performed 1.79 times better than the single processor configuration.

The SPECfp_rate for the dual processor configuration was 14.5, while the SPECfp_rate for the single processor configuration was 10.1. According to these results the dual Intel® Xeon™ system performed 1.44 times better than the single Intel® Xeon™ system system.

Page 5: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 5

Benchmark Language Category Peak Ratio for the

Single Processor Peak Ratio for the Dual

Processor 168.wupwise Fortran 77 Physics / Quantum Chromodynamics 14.1 25.1

171.swim Fortran 77 Shallow Water Modeling 15.0 14.9 172.mgrid Fortran 77 Multi-grid Solver: 3D Potential Field 9.11 10.4 173.applu Fortran 77 Parabolic / Elliptic Partial Differential Equations 10.3 12.7 177.mesa C 3-D Graphics Library 12.7 25.4 178.galgel Fortran 90 Computational Fluid Dynamics 12.5 18.3

179.art C Image Recognition / Neural Networks 6.07 6.99 183.equake C Seismic Wave Propagation Simulation 13.3 18.5 187.facerec Fortran 90 Image Processing: Face Recognition 12.0 19.5 188.ammp C Computational Chemistry 6.19 9.86 189.lucas Fortran 90 Number Theory / Primality Testing 12.7 15.0 191.fma3d Fortran 90 Finite-element Crash Simulation 9.48 14.5

200.sixtrack Fortran 77 High Energy Nuclear Physics Accelerator Design 6.10 12.1 301.apsi Fortran 77 Meteorology: Pollutant Distribution 7.71 12.6

SPECfp_rate 10.1 14.5

Table 2 displays the components of the SPECfp2000 Benchmark

LINPACK Benchmark

The Linpack benchmark is a collection of FORTRAN subroutines that solves large matrices of simultaneous equations. Linpack measures the execution rate in MFLOPs (millions of floating point operations per second). The higher number of MFLOPs indicates a higher performance. NSTL ran three runs of the Linpack benchmark on both the single and dual processor systems. Table 3 shows the average results of the three runs.

Size LDA Align. Single Average MFLOPs Dual Average MFLOPs

Percentage Difference in the Number of MFLOPs Between the Single and

Dual systems 1000 1000 4 2725.366667 4058.566667 32.8 % 2000 2008 4 3108.7 4910.966667 36.7 % 3000 3000 4 3412.733333 5692.933333 40.1 % 4000 4008 4 3466.533333 5826.566667 40.5 %

Table 3 shows the average results of the three runs for each configuration

Page 6: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 6

Average Number of MFLOPs for Each Matrix Size

4058.566667

4910.966667

5692.933333

5826.5666672725.366667

3108.7

3412.733333

3466.533333

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

1000 2000 3000 4000Matrix Size

Num

ber

of M

FLO

Ps

Dual Average MFLOPs Single Average MFLOPs

Figure 1 shows the average results of the three runs for single and dual configurations

Table 3 also shows that the dual Intel® Xeon™ system performed at least 32.8% better than the single Intel® Xeon™ system. The performance difference increased as the size of the matrices increased. This implies that the dual configuration system can perform complex calculations at a faster rate than the single processor configuration.

Ansys Benchmark

Ansys/Multiphysics provides the ability to couple the effects of different types of physical phenomena and to study their impact on a design, creating more realistic simulations. It is a computer aided design program that takes into account many different real world physical situations in designing. As such, Ansys performs many complex floating point based analyses that stresses the processor, memory and hard disk subsystems.

The Ansys benchmark performs linear and transient structural analysis on real-world models. It uses five different models:

1. Structural Linear Static Brick Frontal Medium

2. Structural Linear Static Brick PCG Medium

3. Structural Linear Static Shell Frontal Medium

4. Structural Linear Static Shell Frontal Small

5. Thermal Transient Nonlinear Brick Sparse Medium

The measurements are made in user time, CPU time, and total elapsed system time. NSTL conducted three runs for each configuration. Better performance is indicated by a lower time. The total elapsed times for the benchmarks are displayed in Table 4. The Number/Real World Model columns correspond to the list described above.

Page 7: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 7

Run 1 Run 2 Run 3

Number Real World

Model Dual Single Dual Single Dual Single 1 bmslsbfm 129 175 130 174 126 164 2 bmslsbpm 65 78 64 79 65 78 3 bmslssfm 67 93 68 96 67 94 4 bmttnbfm 825 913 796 917 782 906 5 bmttnbsm 289 302 286 301 287 302

Table 4 displays the total elapsed time system time for all 5 models

The results show a noticeable improvement when the benchmark is run on the dual Intel® Xeon™ system. The dual processor system performed an average of 33.2% for the Static Brick Frontal Medium (Number 1). Static Brick PPG Medium was 21.1% faster on the dual processor system. The largest performance difference was with the Static Shell Frontal Medium where the dual Intel® Xeon™ system performed 40% better.

The Percentage Performance Improvement of the Dual Processor vs the Single Processor for the Ansys Benchmark

35.66

20.00

38.81

10.67 4.50

33.85

23.44

41.18

15.20

5.24

30.16

20.00

40.30

15.86

5.23

0.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

30.00

35.00

40.00

45.00

bmslsbfm bmslsbpm bmslssfm bmttnbfm bmttnbsmReal-World Model

Perc

enta

ge

Run 1 Run 2 Run 3

Figure 2 shows the average percentage improvement of the Dual Processor over the Single Processor for each run.

Photoshop Benchmark

Adobe Photoshop is a professional image-editing software application. The Photoshop benchmark is a Dell internally produced benchmark which uses Adobe Photoshop to perform some common time consuming tasks such as, resizing, Gaussian Blur, Lighting Effects, Unsharpen Mask, canvas rotation, Bas Relief, Watercolor, Extrude, Fragment, Difference Clouds, as well as loading and saving files. The benchmark runs the same tasks on single files of 100MB and 300MB and multiple files,

Page 8: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 8

three of 33MB and 100MB. The final test is an interaction test where three files of 33MB or 100MB are used to create a fourth large image. The interaction performs several copy and paste actions, works with multiple layers, including reordering and merging, and runs filters on different layers before adding some text, flattening the image, and embedding a watermark. NSTL ran the Photoshop benchmark three times for both configurations. Table 5 shows the results from the three runs.

Photoshop Dual Processor Results Photoshop Single Processor Results Run 1 Run 2 Run 3 Run 1 Run 2 Run 3

100MB Single File 40.62831 40.44036 39.83736 37.09115 36.5183 36.5284 100MB Multiple File Filters 47.6529 46.04275 45.95425 40.79015 41.48363 39.81055 100MB Multiple File Interaction 65.00186 65.2189 65.16494 61.44863 61.54622 61.69084 300MB Single File 73.17126 73.32948 73.39515 66.7546 67.15803 66.97511 300MB Multiple File Filters 52.2253 52.3779 52.19456 49.10819 49.20512 49.04398 300MB Multiple File Interaction 47.4846 47.31899 47.31417 45.76437 45.25869 45.53162

Table 5 shows the scores from the three Photoshop benchmark runs. Higher score is better

The results of the Photoshop benchmark indicate that adding a second processor will increase performance. This means that the time the user is waiting for Photoshop to process transformations is decreased, thus improving efficiency. The dual processor configuration performed an average of 9% better on the 100MB Single File. A 12.5% increase in performance for the dual configuration was seen on the 100MB Multiple File Filters. The 100MB Multiple File Interaction showed a 5.5% increase in the performance by adding a second processor to the test system. The 300MB Single File, the 300MB Multiple File Filters, and the 300 MB Multiple File Interaction displayed a 8.6%, a 6.0%, and a 3.9% increase in performance, respectively, by adding a second processor.

Average Percentage Difference Between the Single and Dual Processors Configurations for the Photoshop Benchmark

-20

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Ope

n Fi

leR

esiz

eSa

veM

otio

n Bl

urW

ater

colo

rU

nsha

rpen

Mas

kG

auss

ian

Blur

Ligh

ting

1Li

ghtin

g 2

Ligh

ting

3Ex

trude

Sum

iEG

rain

Plas

tic W

rap

Med

ian

Frag

men

tBa

sRel

ief

Diff

eren

ce C

loud

sTo

talT

ime

Ope

n Fi

leR

esiz

eSa

veM

otio

n Bl

urW

ater

colo

rU

nsha

rpen

Mas

kG

auss

ian

Blur

Ligh

ting

1Li

ghtin

g 2

Ligh

ting

3Ex

trude

Sum

iEG

rain

Plas

tic W

rap

Med

ian

Frag

men

tBa

sRel

ief

Diff

eren

ce C

loud

sTo

talT

ime

Ope

nR

esiz

eIn

tera

ctio

nO

pen

File

Res

ize

Save

Mot

ion

Blur

Wat

erco

lor

Uns

harp

en M

ask

Gau

ssia

n Bl

urLi

ghtin

g 1

Ligh

ting

2Li

ghtin

g 3

Extru

deSu

miE

Gra

inPl

astic

Wra

pM

edia

nFr

agm

ent

BasR

elie

fD

iffer

ence

Clo

uds

Tota

lTim

eO

pen

File

Res

ize

Save

Mot

ion

Blur

Wat

erco

lor

Uns

harp

en M

ask

Gau

ssia

n Bl

urLi

ghtin

g 1

Ligh

ting

2Li

ghtin

g 3

Extru

deSu

miE

Gra

inPl

astic

Wra

pM

edia

nFr

agm

ent

BasR

elie

fD

iffer

ence

Clo

uds

Tota

lTim

eO

pen

Res

ize

Inte

ract

ion

Perc

enta

ge

Figure 3 shows the percentage difference between the dual system and the single system. The negative percentages indicate processes where the single

system returned better result than the dual system.

Page 9: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 9

The Photoshop benchmark also returns the exact time necessary to complete each transformation. It measures the time in seconds for over 80 different procedures. The steps vary from opening and saving files to editing images with filters. The dual Intel® Xeon™ system finished each run an average of ten minutes faster. Please refer to Table 6 for the actual times in seconds.

Dual 1 Dual 2 Dual 3 Average Dual Single 1 Single 2 Single 3 Average Single Total Time 96.28 96.10 96.52 96.30 104.78 104.45 105.10 104.78

Table 6 shows the total time needed in seconds to complete each run.

Sysmark 2002 Benchmark The Sysmark benchmark is made up of two distinct usage categories, Office productivity and an Internet Content Creation portion. The Office Productivity portion involves the creation and processing of documents using Microsoft Office XP, McAfee Virus scan v5.13, Dragon Naturally Speaking v5.0, WinZip 8.0, and Netscape Communicator 5.0. The Internet Content Creation half is comprised of the creation of web pages. The pages are created using Adobe Photoshop 6.01, Windows Media Encoder 7.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver 4.0, Macromedia Flash 5.0, and Adobe Premiere 6.0. The test is run at user speed with delays for key presses and mouse clicks, and each individual action response time is measured. Scores are based on a comparison of response times between the test system and a fixed calibration platform (Intel 815 Chipset, Pentium III 1.0 GHz).

The results of the Sysmark benchmark show that the dual processor configuration has a higher rating than the single processor configuration. This implies that adding a second processor can greatly improve the performance of many office applications. The Internet Content Creation portion of the testing showed a 24% and a 9% increase in the Office productivity portion. Table 7 shows the results from the Sysmark benchmark,

Dual Processor Ratings Single Processor Rating

Internet 447 361 Run 1 Office 210 193 Internet 454 367 Run 2 Office 210 193 Internet 447 361 Run 3 Office 210 193 Internet 449 363 Average Office 210 193

Table 7 shows the results of the dual and single processor configurations for the Sysmark benchmark.

Nastran 2001 Benchmark Nastran is a Computer aided engineering tool. The Nastran benchmark performs real-world analysis on models such as a cube, a cylinder, a transmission gear, and an engine block. The benchmark performs a static analysis of the cube model. It then conducts a resource prediction of a cylinder. Next it does a static analysis of an engine block containing super elements. The final test is conducted is a stress and deflective analysis of a transmission gear. The results are returned in system time, CPU time, and total elapsed time, thus lower numbers are better. The benchmark performs three runs on its own, and therefore, NSTL only ran the benchmark one time. Dell also provided smaller Nastran models to run with the benchmark. The smaller models are more processor intensive and can assist in illustrating the benefits of a dual processor configuration over a single processor configuration. The Lgast model, for example, finished 45% faster after adding a second processor to the test system.

Page 10: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 10

Dual Processor Single Processor

Model Run 1 Run 2 Run 3 Run 1 Run 2 Run 3

lg0qdf0 Real: 8034.640 Real: 7960.031 Real: 7859.718 Real: 8333.187 Real: 8503.250 Real: 8448.000

xl0emf0 Real: 13349.953 Real: 12587.218 Real: 12955.484 Real: 14121.515 Real: 13377.906 Real: 12659.734

xl0rst0 Real: 457.437 Real: 463.500 Real: 478.140 Real: 474.031 Real: 487.562 Real: 491.656

Cube_Statics_040k Real: 94.046 Real: 90.031 Real: 89.062 Real: 103.6 Real: 99.5 Real: 94.61

Cylinder_modesx_100k Real: 107.75 Real: 105.203 Real: 104.484 Real: 112 Real: 112.4 Real: 111.4

Lgast Real: 95.906 Real: 96.578 Real: 96.859 Real: 140.8 Real: 140.9 Real: 96.578

Lgmst Real: 58.375 Real: 57.343 Real: 56.859 Real: 61.91 Real: 61.61 Real: 61.92

Prl005 Real: 67.109 Real: 67.343 Real: 67.218 Real: 70.28 Real: 70.09 Real: 70.59

Table 8 shows the results for the 3 models.

Adding a second processor to the test system decreases the amount of time needed to complete the benchmark. The dual configuration finished the lg0qdf0 almost eight minutes faster than the single processor configuration. The x10emf0 model was completed seven minutes faster on the dual configuration versus the single configuration. There was only a slight difference for the third model, which is the least complex of the three. The results show that the increase in the time saved by using a dual Intel® Xeon™ system is proportional to the increase in the complexity of the models.

Average Times for the Nastran Benchmark for Each Model Type for Dual and Single Processor Configurations

7951.463

12964.219

466.359

8428.146

13386.386

484.416

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

lg0qdf0 xl0emf0 xl0rst0Model

Ave

rage

Tim

e (s

)

Dual Processor Single Processor

Figure 4 shows the average times of the three runs. The smaller bar indicates better performance.

Page 11: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 11

Fluent Benchmark Fluent is used to solve complex flows using the Fluent Flow solver. To perform these tasks require a high number of computations. The first three calculations are considered the small class. The next three are considered medium sized classes. Table 9 describes each portion of the Fluent benchmark.

Class Benchmark Cells Solver Description

FL5S1 32,000 segregated implicit turbulent flow in a bend FL5S2 32,000 coupled implicit turbulent flow in a bend Small

FL5S3 89,856 coupled implicit flow in a compressor, rotor 37 FL5M1 155,188 segregated implicit coal combustion in a boiler, with particle tracking FL5M2 242,782 segregated implicit turbulent flow in an engine valveport Medium

FL5M3 352,800 segregated implicit combustion in a high velocity burner

Table 9 shows the classes that comprises the Fluent benchmark.

The results are returned in terms of CPU time and Wall time (Tables 10 and 11). The rating, which is the metric used to compare performance, is the number of benchmarks that can be run in 24 hours. This number can be obtained by dividing 86400 (the number of seconds in 24 hours) by the time it takes to run each benchmark. A higher rating indicates a faster performing system.

Run 1 Run 2 Run 3 Dual Processor Configuration CPU Wall CPU Wall CPU Wall

fl5m1-2.trn 492 164 492 164 490 163

fl5m2-2.trn 242 81 243 81 243 81

fl5m3-2.trn 1302 434 1302 434 1305 435

fl5s1-2.trn 130 44 133 44 135 44

fl5s2-2.trn 129 42 126 42 126 42

fl5s3-2.trn 191 64 189 62 189 63

Table 10 shows the results for the dual processor configuration using the Fluent benchmark.

Run 1 Run 2 Run 3 Single Processor C fi ti

CPU Wall CPU Wall CPU Wall

fl5m1-serial.trn 262 262 262 262 262 262

fl5m2-serial.trn 176 176 176 176 176 177

fl5m3-serial.trn 825 825 826 826 825 825

fl5s1-serial.trn 62 61 61 61 62 61

fl5s2-serial.trn 72 72 72 72 72 72

fl5s3-serial.trn 108 108 107 107 108 108

Table 11 shows the results for the single processor configuration using the Fluent benchmark

Page 12: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 12

Average Fluent Benchmark Ratings vs Each Fluent Benchmark for Dual and Single Processor Configurations

1963.64

2011.43

1371.66

527.91

1066.67

198.93

1416.39

1200.00 802.49 329.77

489.98

104.64

0.00

500.00

1000.00

1500.00

2000.00

2500.00

FL5S1 FL5S2 FL5S3 FL5M1 FL5M2 FL5M3Benchmark

Rating

Dual Rating Single Rating

Figure 5 shows the average rating for the Fluent benchmark for the Single and Dual Processor configurations.

Higher number indicates a better score.

As the results from the Fluent benchmarks illustrate, adding a second Intel® Xeon™ processor to the test system leads to a noticeable performance improvement. All of the benchmark models showed a significant increase in performance when the test system used both processors. There was a 27% increase in performance for the FL5S1 model. The FL5S2 and FL5S3 benchmark models showed an over 40% increase in performance with the second processor active. The FL5M1 and FL5M3 benchmarks showed a 37% and 47% increase in performance, respectively. The largest improvement was seen with the FL5M2 model, where the dual Intel® Xeon™ system performed 54% better than the single processor configuration. The results show as the models become more complex, the advantages of using a dual processor system over a single processor system become more evident. Figure 4 shows the average rating for the Fluent benchmark for the Single and Dual Processor configurations.

Page 13: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 13

Conclusion

The benchmark testing conducted by NSTL, shows that adding a second Intel® Xeon™ to a computer system greatly improves performance. All of the benchmark results showed an improvement in the speed and performance of the applications. The SPECcpu benchmark, which measures CPU performance, displayed a 79% increase in the performance of the dual Intel® Xeon™ system over the single Intel® Xeon™ system. The Ansys benchmark performs linear and transient structural analysis on real-world models. This benchmark also showed a significant increase in performance by adding a second Intel® Xeon™ processor to the test system. The increase ranged from 22% up to 40% for the different sections of the benchmark. Adobe Photoshop also performed better on the dual processor system. The dual Intel® Xeon™ system finished an average of ten minutes faster than the single processor system on a mix of typical Photoshop operations. The Linpack benchmark measures the execution rate in MFLOPs (millions of floating point operations per second). NSTL testing showed that the dual Intel® Xeon™ system provides a 38% increase in performance over the single Intel® Xeon™ system. The increase in performance was proportional to the increase in the size of the matrices. The Fluent benchmark, which performs complex calculations to obtain flow rates for various models, showed a significant increase in performance when run on the dual processor configuration. The performance increases ranged from 27% to as high as 54% better on the dual Intel® Xeon™ system. The final benchmark NSTL conducted was the Sysmark benchmark which measures performance using a mix of applications in a multitasking environment. The results of the Sysmark benchmark show that adding a second processor to the test system in multitasking environments improved the performance of office applications by 8% and internet content creation by 24%. NSTL testing showed that for all the benchmarks, the dual processor configuration showed better performance than the single processor configuration, thus reducing the time needed for an end-user to complete their task more efficiently.

Page 14: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 14

Appendix A

Copyright Information: Intel, Intel® Xeon, and Intel® NetBurst are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries ANSYS is a registered trademark of SAS IP, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of ANSYS Inc. NASTRAN is a registered trademark of the National Aeronautics Space Administration. MSC.Nastran is an enhanced proprietary version developed and maintained by MSC.Software Corporation. BAPCO is a U.S. Registered Trademark of the Business Applications Performance Corporation. SYSmark is a U.S. Registered Trademark of the Business Applications Performance Corporation. SPEC Copyright © 1995-2002 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). All rights reserved. SPEC and the "performance chart" SPEC logo are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Microsoft COPYRIGHT NOTICE. Copyright © 2001 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington 98052-6399 U.S.A. All rights reserved. Windows, Windows logo, Windows Media, Windows Media logo, Windows NT, and/or other Microsoft products referenced herein are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, Quadro are registered trademarks or trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the United States and/or other countries Sound Blaster, the Sound Blaster Live! logo, are registered trademarks of Creative Technology Ltd. in the United States and/or other countries. Dell© Copyright 2002 Dell Computer Corporation. Dell, the Dell logo, Precision are trademarks of Dell Computer Corporation. Intel, the Intel and Pentium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Microsoft Windows, the Windows logo and Windows 2000 are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Page 15: Test Report

NSTL Test Report

NSTL 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428

http://www.nstl.com/

Page 15

NSTL, Inc. prepared this report under contract for Dell Computer Corporation, Inc. NSTL does not guaranteethe accuracy, adequacy or completeness of the services provided to Dell Computer Corporation, Inc. or thedata included herein. NSTL MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO RESULTS TO BEOBTAINED BY ANY PERSON OR ENTITY FROM USE OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS REPORT. NSTLMAKES NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR APARTICULAR PURPOSE OF ANY PRODUCT MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT.

NSTL’s proficiency and thoroughness provide clients with a high quality, cost-effective means to assess, differentiate and evaluate IT products. Additional information about NSTL is available through the World Wide Web at http://www.nstl.com/. For further information about NSTL, please contact us at: Telephone: 610 832 8400 Fax: 610 941 9952 e-mail: [email protected]

NSTL is the leading independent information technology testing organization for the computer industry, dedicated to providing high quality services and test tools to hardware developers, software publishers, government agencies and corporations. NSTL has extensive experience developing and conducting objective tests to assess new and existing products for compatibility, performance, comparative performance, usability, and functionality. Our testing services are also used for capacity planning, acquisition support and impact analysis.

About NSTL