It's a ripper

[RickS]

Got a new processing workstation for myself as a Xmas present. It's not even breaking sweat registering 200+ subs... AMD Threadripper 1950X CPU (16 cores, 32 threads) with 64GB DDR4 RAM and a NVMe SSD drive.

Cheers,
Rick.

[rustigsmed]

solid choice Rick! what is your RAM speed running at?

[RickS]

3600MHz DDR4, Russ :thumbsup:

[lazjen]

Run a PI benchmark and post the results. :)

[RickS]

I ran some last night. On Linux I was beating the latest Threadripper benchmarks (which all appear to be on Windows.) I was planning to do a little optimisation (RAM disk, etc.) before I go public with results :)

[Camelopardalis]

Nice one Rick, but where did you get 200+ subs from :question: did you sneakily get a CMOS camera too and not tell us? :lol:

[RickS]

They're real (long) subs, Dunk :P :lol:

A long drizzle integration has gone from 47 mins on my old system down to 10...

[lazjen]

Other optimisations to consider that will tweak it more:

* Build your own custom kernel, compile the OS and packages with optimised settings. In the past this could give up to 10% or more improvements on generic linux distro installs. These days I doubt it would be close to that, but it still should be a couple of percent.

* Overclock, CPU of course, but tweaking the memory timings/settings I've heard can give great results.

* RAID set up on disks.

...but that requires a bit of work, so it's probably easier to enjoy what you've got. :)

[peter_4059]

How hot does it get? You might need to upgade your air conditioning ;)

[RickS]

Will probably play with the memory settings to make sure I'm taking advantage of the 3600MHz RAM but probably won't go much further. I'd rather spend my time processing!



The old computer was capable of raising the room temp by a couple of degrees. Should be able to do "better" now. Fortunately, the A/C is overspecced :thumbsup:

[troypiggo]

If you plug it in to 480V instead of 240V it will go even faster for a brief time.

[RickS]

Thanks, Troy. I'm going to run it off a Tesla coil.

[strongmanmike]

Well with all that data coming in from your whole Earth optical array, you will need it!...:eyepop:

:lol:

[RickS]

That's true, Mike. I'm aiming for a scope on every continent :lol:

[Camelopardalis]

Sounds like it makes short work of all that read noise then Rick :thumbsup: :lol:

[Camelopardalis]

Incidentally, what form factor did you choose Rick?

I wouldn’t mind one, but having used an all-in-one for years, not sure I could go back to a big ugly box :help:

I’ll be amazed if they come out with a mobo in micro ITX format...could easily hide that behind the kettle.

[RickS]

Yes Dunk, if you can integrate fast enough the noise gets left behind ;)



Full tower. I have a large desk with lots of room underneath and I'll be adding a bunch more drives. Fortunately, the glass door is facing the far side of the desk so I don't get a continuous disco light show. Even the RAM has coloured LEDs :rolleyes:

[peter_4059]

You might have to get them CALIBRATED

[RickS]

Aiieeeeee :eyepop:

[Camelopardalis]

Yeah coloured LEDs could be a bit much :lol: unless they could be programmed to represent, say, CPU usage or something useful :D

[multiweb]

Do you switch it off at night? In case is does "exterminate"

[RickS]

Nah. I'm worried that the inrush current will take down the grid each morning :lol:

[LewisM]

The rude question - $?

[RickS]

Around $5.5K without keyboard or screen. I could have cheaped out on some of the components and gone for smaller/slower but I spend a lot of time processing at it seemed false economy.

[peter_4059]

How is it cooled?

[peter_4059]

Like a qsi on 24V?

[RickS]

There's a liquid cooler on the CPU with a separate radiator that blows out of the case. Just a few fans otherwise.



Ooooh, that was a low blow. Or maybe it was a fast blow?

[troypiggo]

If I go down, I'm taking someone else with me. :)

[Atmos]

That’s more reasonable than I was expecting considering the specs. Or is that just me not having looked at pricing a computer for 3 years and not realising how far we’ve come :lol:

[RickS]

I don't think it's outrageous. It's just the premium you pay for fast kit at any given time (the Intel 18 core CPU is about twice as expensive, so it could have been worse.)

I'm very happy with how PI performs under Linux on this beast. Stuff that took hours on my old i7-960 under Windows is now done in minutes.

I don't know that I'll finish images a lot faster but it will be a lot less frustrating!

[Camelopardalis]

Yeah the AMD chips are really competitive...for a little more than $400 you can pick up and 8-core Ryzen 7, which from the benchmarks I’ve seen, works out about 2x the performance of my i7-3770.

Moore’s law no longer applies!

[multiweb]

Sounds like a matrix job. :eyepop:

[lazjen]

Probably the most frustrating thing price-wise with these new systems is the RAM cost - it's actually climbed in price, not dropped. And it's easy to spend more than the cost of the CPU and motherboard combined on memory.

Admittedly, I'm talking about having memory at the level Rick has in his machine, but that's the new "norm" for higher end processing, content creation, etc.

[RickS]

Purchasing memory (RAM and flash) for manufacturing at work, typically component level parts but we do use some modules, has been terrible over the past year. Lead times are abysmally long and variable and pricing is all over the place, going everywhere except down. I get the feeling that there's a mix of unpredictable demand (here's a new iPhone - no memory for you now!) and deliberate throttling of production.

I read recently that China was going to start manufacturing their own memory. It will be interesting to see what effect that has...

[Shano592]

So it was a component build, or out of the box for the price? The price sounds good for the spec, and the full tower will be a great RAID platform.

The Chinese making memory won't be a big issue. "Secure" Taiwan, "appropriate" the technology to the mainland, upscale! Profit!

[Atmos]

Bit cheaper than buying an iMac Pro :lol:

[Camelopardalis]

No kidding :eyepop:

I've recently found essentially a mini-ITX type case that will _just_ hold a micro-ATX motherboard....

The only problem then is the screen, but I digress :lol:

[Atmos]

I am thinking I’ll need to upgrade my imaging processing machine, my MacBook Pro does a decent job but what Rick has here looks to be along the lines of what I should be getting price/performance.

[FlashDrive]

What a ' beast ' of a Machine :rundog::rundog:

[RickS]

I spent a day or two selecting components and paid Umart $99 to assemble it. It seemed like a good deal knowing that I'd spend at least half a day of cursing and spluttering to get it put together :lol:



I did check out the iMac Pro specs and pricing as a comparison. It made me feel better about spending a fairly large wad of cash ;)



It sure is, Col!

[lazjen]

Uploaded a PI Benchmark yet? :)

[RickS]

I ran the benchmark several times and submitted the result before I went to the USA but it didn't get posted to the site. I haven't had a chance to figure out why yet...

[DavidTrap]

They don’t believe anything can be that quick

DT

[gary]

Hi Rick,

EE Times reported last month (https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=40)that :-



Story here :-
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=40

Page 2 :-
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=40&doc_id=1332737&page_number=2

It reminds me of when I was in Beijing in 1984. It was just a sea of
bicycles and the only cars were some taxis and a few government vehicles.

Some locals looked frightened to see you if they turned around in the street
and you happened to be there behind them. You may as well have been
from another planet.

When you saw another westerner you tended to acknowledge each other
with a little nod.

At the hotel I was having dinner and a Chinese chap introduced himself as
being a member of the "Australia-China Friendship Society".

I asked him what he thought the major purpose of the Australia-China
Friendship Society was?

He replied, "to assist China in giving back the technology that is rightfully hers of which the west has been guardians of for these past centuries".

I looked at his face and he was serious.

[RickS]

Got a couple of Linux benchmarks uploaded now (swap on SSD and RAM disk):
http://pixinsight.com/benchmark/benchmark-report.php?sn=23C1RD8DESDV9TUG61I8I 79U8NZ9ED6U
http://pixinsight.com/benchmark/benchmark-report.php?sn=G0PD4NRBGD50FPMH41BK9 S44B541H6CV



Interesting times, eh Gary?

[Atmos]

From memory I get about 4,500-5000 as a total performance, would that mean that you’d be getting ~4x the speed increase?

Curious as to whether it works that way :)

[lazjen]

If I'm reading those benchmarks correctly, there's no real advantage using a RAM disk? Assuming I have not made a mistake there, I guess this would be because of how much memory you've got and Linux's excellent page/buffer support. It's excellent news as you don't have "fear" a power outage and lose your swap cache. :)

[RickS]

It depends on whether your workload is similar to the benchmark, Colin ;) My old system is an i7-960 that also does around 5,000. On my tests so far the new system is 4 to 10 times faster on time-consuming processes like calibration, registration, drizzle integration and linear normalization.



Yes, I think that's right, Chris. The improvement from the RAM disk is fairly small. The comparison is with a NVMe SSD. If I was using a SATA SSD or, heaven forbid, a spinning disk then the difference would likely be significant.

[Atmos]

Well that’s good to know Rick.
My MacBook Pro has done me well for the past few years but I have been thinking of getting a desktop for processing mosaics. When working with 16MP or less images the time taken for most processes is pretty short anyway. Once Local Normalisation and Drizzle come in however, I push go and go to bed or go to work :lol:

[RickS]

I'm hoping a coffee break will be long enough with the new box :lol:

[lazjen]

First pass PI benchmark on mine:


CPU Identification
CPU vendor ............. AuthenticAMD
CPU model .............. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core Processor

System Information
Platform ............... Linux
Operating system ....... 4.15.4-gentoo #9 SMP PREEMPT Sun Feb 25 14:40:15 AEST 2018 GNU/Linux
Core version ........... PixInsight Core 01.08.05.1352 (x64)
Logical processors ..... 32
Total memory size ...... 62.885 GiB

Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:20.19
CPU time ............... 00:18.30
Swap time .............. 00:01.87
Swap transfer rate ..... 8858.208 MiB/s

Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 23304
CPU performance ........ 20683
Swap performance ....... 49061


While it was running, the CPU freq seemed to be hitting up to mid 3600s (from the base 3400), so I suspect there's more head room there yet - I haven't worked out how to overclock the cpu properly yet - just using auto settings.

Also, my memory sticks are at default timings at 3466, not 3600.

Pretty happy with the results so far.

[RickS]

Nice one, Chris! I got your email. Will send you BIOS info when I'm able to reboot.

Cheers,
Rick.

[lazjen]

Thanks Rick.

I submitted the benchmark to PI: http://pixinsight.com/benchmark/benchmark-report.php?sn=P00YK8R8G0U1XV9S8DDG5 ZN9XCODM84A

It's now top of the list for TR builds, 2nd overall to some Intel 28 core system.

And to re-confirm what I've said before - Linux PI blows Windows out of the water. The best Windows version I can find is on remarkably similar hardware to mine: http://pixinsight.com/benchmark/benchmark-report.php?sn=WP52WM46UVLEWSKL157T9 4Y1Q48I6377 and is only 2/3rd of what I'm getting. (Edit: it's CPU was overclocked to 4Ghz, I haven't done that)

Really recommend using Linux when using PI.

[RickS]

I also found Linux much faster than Windows... except for StarAlignment with distortion correction which runs more slowly on Linux, at least on the data sets I have tried. Weird, huh!

[lazjen]

That is weird. I wonder if it's a bug?

[RickS]

I have it on my to-do list to try a few more data sets and then perhaps report it as an issue.

[lazjen]

Tonight's effort:


CPU Identification
CPU vendor ............. AuthenticAMD
CPU model .............. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core Processor

System Information
Platform ............... Linux
Operating system ....... 4.15.4-gentoo #9 SMP PREEMPT Sun Feb 25 14:40:15 AEST 2018 GNU/Linux
Core version ........... PixInsight Core 01.08.05.1352 (x64)
Logical processors ..... 32
Total memory size ...... 62.885 GiB

Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:18.94
CPU time ............... 00:17.13
Swap time .............. 00:01.79
Swap transfer rate ..... 9251.000 MiB/s

Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 24838
CPU performance ........ 22092
Swap performance ....... 51237


32 unique directories for swap on the nvme disk. Really diminishing returns though.

Tightened the memory settings timings, but have yet to verify stability via memtest run.

No CPU overclocking yet (all "auto").

[RickS]

Nice result, Chris!

[Slawomir]

You got yourself a nice abacus Rick! ;)

Now, if one connected two of those in parallel...:question:

[RickS]

Just the one keeps my office warm, Suavi :lol:

[Slawomir]

Did you need to get 400V three-fase connected to the house?

[RickS]

We had 3-phase installed when we built :lol: Also cat 6 cabling.

[Slawomir]

I like your thinking ahead Rick!

On top of being a very effective IR emitter - it is also a delightfully fast computing machine that is being used for a noble cause :thumbsup:

[lazjen]

Actually, these machines aren't as power hungry as you might think. They've improved things a lot. Still a long way to go though. :)

[lazjen]

Tonight's effort has just claimed the #1 position in the world for PI benchmark :) Knocked off a 28 core Intel Xeon box.


CPU Identification
CPU vendor ............. AuthenticAMD
CPU model .............. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core Processor

System Information
Platform ............... Linux
Operating system ....... 4.15.4-gentoo #9 SMP PREEMPT Sun Feb 25 14:40:15 AEST 2018 GNU/Linux
Core version ........... PixInsight Core 01.08.05.1352 (x64)
Logical processors ..... 32
Total memory size ...... 62.885 GiB

Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:18.55
CPU time ............... 00:16.82
Swap time .............. 00:01.71
Swap transfer rate ..... 9666.072 MiB/s

Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 25357
CPU performance ........ 22501
Swap performance ....... 53536


Last night's memory settings didn't pass the test (failed after 90 min testing grrr).

Tonight, went back to the base 3466 for Ram, but kicked the CPU up to 3.9G (from 3.4Ghz).

[lazjen]

And let's beat my "world record":

CPU Identification
CPU vendor ............. AuthenticAMD
CPU model .............. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core Processor

System Information
Platform ............... Linux
Operating system ....... 4.15.4-gentoo #9 SMP PREEMPT Sun Feb 25 14:40:15 AEST 2018 GNU/Linux
Core version ........... PixInsight Core 01.08.05.1352 (x64)
Logical processors ..... 32
Total memory size ...... 62.885 GiB

Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:18.02
CPU time ............... 00:16.75
Swap time .............. 00:01.25
Swap transfer rate ..... 13282.940 MiB/s

Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 26108
CPU performance ........ 22590
Swap performance ....... 73568


Switched to a RAM disk and did a compromise improvement to the memory timings (untested fully).

Side Note: When I'm done playing with the system for these benchmarks, I think I'll be reverting the CPU overclock (and I certainly won't bother with a RAM disk). The PI performance difference from a comfortable baseline is probably <5% maybe, so no need to over stress the machine for daily use.

[RickS]

Congrats on the world championship, Chris :lol:

Likewise, I'm not bothered about extracting the last couple of percent for real world use. So long as the Ripper is several times faster than my old processing workstation I'm happy.

[lazjen]

Haha, thanks Rick - I couldn't let that 28 core Xeon system keep the throne when our numbers were so close. :)

I think the new system will be a minimum 4 times faster than my old system for PI. For some intense operations, I expect that number to be even higher.

[LewisM]

You sure that's not a Large Hadron Collider? Seems to accelerate pixels at astonishing rates...

[Atmos]

I don’t think it’ll take much of an upgrade to beat my 4 year old laptop hehe

[lazjen]

I was replacing a near 5 year old laptop, so yeah, bit of a difference. :)

[LewisM]

Mine is 8 years and counting (after I replaced the hard drive after that failed).

In fact, the old ASUS i7 crunches pixels faster and better than this new (2 y.o) POS Lenovo i7 I am typing this on GRRRRRRRRR. Only good thing about the Lenovo "Gaming laptop" (yeah, runs the original Zork real well :mad:) is the red lit keyboard. Other than that, the ancient ASUS is my pride and joy.

[RickS]

AMD has announced a new range of embedded processors based on a modified version of the Ryzen/Threadripper 8 CPU die. It's called the Epyc Embedded 3000 family, code name Snowy Owl. I wonder if I can talk the HW guys at work into using some of these in a new product. A rack full would make a great PI processing cluster :lol: