AMD 64 manual Related Documents, http//msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186255SQL.90.aspx

Performance Guidelines for AMD Athlon™ 64 and AMD Opteron™	40555 Rev. 3.00 June 2006
ccNUMA Multiprocessor Systems

bandwidth test, it exercises both of these modes of operation. The test serves as a latency sensitive test case when the test threads perform read-only operations and as a bandwidth sensitive test when the test threads carry out write-only operations. The discussion below explores the performance results of this test, with an emphasis on behavior exhibited when the test imposes high bandwidth demands on the low level resources of the system.

Additionally, the tests are run in undersubscribed, highly subscribed, and fully subscribed modes. In undersubscribed mode, there are significantly fewer threads than the number of processors. In highly subscribed mode, the number of threads approaches the number of processors. In the fully subscribed mode, the number of threads is equal to the number of processors. Testing these conditions provides an understanding of the impact of thread subscription on performance.

Based on the data and the analysis gathered from this synthetic test-bench, this application note presents recommendations to software developers who are working on applications, compiler tool chains, virtual machines and operating systems. Finally, the test results should also dispel some common myths concerning identical performance results obtained when comparing workloads that are symmetrical in all respects except for the thread and memory placement used.

1.1Related Documents

The following web links are referenced in the text and provide valuable resource and background information:

[1]http://www.hotchips.org/archives/hc14/3_Tue/28_AMD_Hammer_MP_HC_v8.pdf

[2]http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mbligh/presentations/OLS2004- numa_paper.pdf

[3]http://www.amd64.org/lists/discuss/msg03314.html

[4]http://www.pgroup.com/doc/pgiug.pdf

[5]http://www.novell.com/collateral/4621437/4621437.pdf

[6]http://opensolaris.org/os/community/performance/mpo_overview.pdf

[7]http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/performance/numa/observability/

[8]http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dllproc/base/ multiple_processors.asp

[9]http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/memory/base/ virtualalloc.asp

[10]http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186255(SQL.90).aspx

[11]http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/ 529588d3-71bc-45ea-a84b-267914674709.mspx

10 Introduction Chapter 1