( ESNUG 380 Item 12 ) ------------------------------------------- [10/25/01]
Subject: ( ESNUG 379 #9 ) PhysOpt/PrimeTime/VCS Sun/IBM/Linux Benchmarks
> The following table lists the values reported back from the Unix "time"
> command on a couple of small synthesis jobs.
>
> job cpu Sun cpu Linux PC ratio
> 1 3059 sec 1715 sec 1.8x
> 2 652 347 1.9x
>
> Seems to track the MHz scale fairly nicely.
>
> - Scott Evans
> Sonics Inc. Mountain View, CA
From: "Shannon Hill" <shannon_hill@tenornetworks.com>
John,
Here's my contribution to the growing number of Linux/Sun/IBM synthesis
benchmarks. Task: synthesize top-level design in IBM cu11, 8,669,551 cells,
121,179 instances
usertime systime elapsed cpu mem/mhz
--------------------------------------------------------------
19757.0u 83.0 sec 5:33:44 Sun Ultra60 2gb/333mhz
15514.5u 335.5 sec 4:30:54 IBM rs6000 4gb/400mhz
9833.5u 35.2 sec 2:44:32 Intel P3-1000 1gb/1000mhz *
* - we used the Abit vp6 motherboard
Interestingly enough, SUN wants $39,000 for 4 gb of memory on their new
systems, while 4 gb of ECC Registered DDR can be had for around $2000
(about $500 for a 1gb DIMM).
- Shannon Hill
Tenor Networks, Inc. Acton, MA
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: "Simon Matthews" <simon@paxonet.com>
Hi, John,
We have been running PrimeTime extensively on a 1M gate design. We had
been using our Sun Ultra-60s (450 MHz processor, 2 GB RAM) or our AX-MP
machine (400 MHz processor with 8 MB cache, 4 GB RAM).
The jobs typically took about 30-40 minutes on the workstations
We recently tested the job on Linux and won't look back.
The Linux box used was a P-III/800 MHz, 1 GB RAM (PC100). The jobs take
around 16 minutes on this machine.
- Simon Matthews
Paxonet Communications Fremont, CA
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: "Russ Petersen" <russp@subasic.sciatl.com>
Hi John,
We are considering the purchase of some Dell dual P-III 1.26 Tualatin
rackmount systems with 4 Gigs of SDRAM and we recently benchmarked them to
get some idea of their performance on real world Synopsys jobs. I thought
others would find this interesting. Here are my 4 basic tests:
test A - 400,000 gate PhysOpt 2001.08 gates-to-gates
(Memory usage: 1.3 Gig or so max.)
test B - 1.6 million gate PrimeTime 2001.08 job using DSPF's,
(uses about 1.2 Gigs)
test C - VCS 6.0 R20 simulation of RTL source code
(140 megs)
test C2 - lengthened VCS 6.0 R20 simulation of test C
(140 megs)
Machines:
Sun Ultra - 450 Mhz UltraSparc2 with 4 Gigs Ram, 4 Processors
AMD - AMD Dual Athlon 1.2 Ghz MP's with 2 Gigs DDR SDRAM
DELL - 1.26 GHZ Dual PIII Tualatins with 4 Gigs SDRAM
On all tests I was carefull not to exceed the 2 gigs of DDR on the Athlon
box as I did not want swap to play a part.
Machine Tests Running Run Time
----------- ------------- ------------
Sun Ultra test A 17 hours, 38 mins
AMD Athlon test A 8 hours
Dell P-III test A 7 hours, 31 mins
Sun Ultra test B 14 hours, 7 minutes
AMD Athlon test B 6.25 hours
Dell P-III test B 5.52 hours
Sun Ultra test C not tested
AMD Athlon test C 1.5 hours
Dell P-III test C 1.26 hours
Sun Ultra test A + test B test A: 17 hours, 42 mins
test B: 14 hours, 11 mins
AMD Athlon test A + test B not tested since combined
memory exceed 2 gigs limit
Dell P-III test A + test B test A: 7.68 hours
test B: 5.65 hours
AMD Athlon test A + test C2 test A: 9.58 hours - *
test C2: 8.43 hours - *
Dell P-III test A + test C2 test A: 9.1 hours - *
test C2: 7.67 hours - *
* - "test A + test C2" used about 1.45 gigs for the 2 tests
so swap did not come into play
Dell P-III test C2 6.15 hours
Sun Ultra test C2 6 hours, 56 minutes
Dell P-III test C2 no file dump 4.47 hours
Sun Ultra test C2 no file dump 5 hours 4 minutes
I was surprised to see that the dual Athlon did not beat out the dual P-III
with SDRAM system. I conclude that this is due to the performance of the
P-III Tutalatin procs. (See Tom's Hardware for details on this CPU; 512k
caches on them.) I just thought on dual process jobs the DDR would really
buy a lot but I guess it doesn't on these types of jobs. I assume that as
the processor speed increases the extra bandwidth of DDR would help more.
I was also surprised the one simulation job I got to run (test C2) to
compare the Sun Ultra versus the P-III did not show a greater spread. I
have seen other simulation jobs previous to this run faster on a Linux box
than on a Sun workstation, so I assume it must be something funny about
this particular sim. (I would be curious to hear others results with
simulations on Linux vs. Sun workstations.)
Also, on the VCS runs, I included the compile time so maybe its the compile
time that differed a lot. I don't know as I have not had a chance to check
this out.
Amazing. I would say you could easily get the Dell with the 4 Gigs for
about $5-6k, depending on your company relationship with them and quantity.
The AMD box would probably be (I'm guessing since 1 Gig DDR dimms were not
yet available) around $7-8k with 3.5 Gigs of DDR. The AMD had the
disadvantage of only allowing 3.5 Gigs max as it has only 4 memory slots and
one of them for some reason can't handle a 1 Gig dimm when they become
available.
Sun - I just priced a SunBlade 1000 with one 900 Mhz CPU and 4 Gigs of
memory on Sun's store website and it came to a grand total of $59,040.00.
An additional 900 Mhz CPU increases the price by about $10k. The main
advantage this machine would have over the X86 boxes is a big, big cache
(8 Megs per CPU) and big memory bandwidth. (I think the total bandwidth is
something like 3.8 Gigs per second). So I would guess that means it would
at least cost $40k for Sun equivalent of my Linux boxes (ouch!) since the
web sites prices on most companies tend to run really high.
Overall, one thing is clear, the Linux boxes performed very well, especially
given their price, and hence I am wanting to order a good number for our use
here. It also helps that most Synopsys tools are out on Linux now. I just
hope Synopsys can get a 64-bit port of PrimeTime to Linux soon.
- Russ Petersen
Scientific Atlanta
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