Alaa | Colfax Research

Capabilities of Intel® AVX-512 in Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors (Skylake)

September 19, 2017

This paper reviews the Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512) instruction set and answers two critical questions: How do Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors based on the Skylake architecture (2017) compare to their predecessors based on Broadwell due to AVX-512? How are Intel Xeon processors based on Skylake different from their alternative, Intel® Xeon Phi™ processors with the Knights Landing architecture, which also feature AVX-512? We address these questions from the programmer’s perspective by demonstrating C language code of microkernels benefitting from AVX-512. For each example, we dig deeper and analyze the compilation practices, resultant assembly, and optimization reports. In addition to code studies, the paper contains performance measurements for a synthetic benchmark with guidelines on estimating peak performance. In conclusion, we outline the workloads and application domains that can benefit from the new features of AVX-512 instructions. Colfax-SKL-AVX512-Guide.pdf (524 KB) Table of Contents 1. Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 [...]

HPLinpack Benchmark on Intel Xeon Phi Processor Family x200 with Intel Omni-Path Fabric 100

July 10, 2017

We report the performance and a simplified tuning methodology of the HPLinpack benchmark on a cluster of Intel Xeon Phi processors 7250 with an Intel Omni-Path Fabric 100 Series interconnect. Our benchmarks are taken on the Colfax Cluster, a state-of-the-art computing resource open to the public for benchmarking and code validation. The paper provides recipes that may be used to reproduce our results in environments similar to this cluster. Colfax-HPL-Intel-Xeon-Phi-x200-and-Intel-Omni-Path-100.pdf (130 KB) Table of Contents Section 1. HPLinpack Benchmark Algorithm HPL Configuration File Section 2. System Configuration Intel Architecture Colfax Cluster Section 3. Results Recipe Performance Impact of System Configuration Section 4. Summary Section 1. HPLinpack Benchmark The HPLinpack benchmark generates and solves on distributed-memory computers a large dense system of linear algebraic equations with random coefficients. The benchmark exercises the floating-point arithmetic units, the memory subsystem, and the communication fabric. The result of the HPLinpack benchmark is based [...]

Articles by Alaa