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Generational Windows Multicore Performance Tests
snydeq writes "Windows XP, Windows Vista, and (soon) Windows 7 all support SMP out of the box, but as InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy notes, 'experience has shown that multiprocessing across discrete CPUs is not the same thing as multiprocessing across integrated cores within the same CPU.' As such, Kennedy set out to stress the multiprocessing capabilities of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 in dual-core and quad-core performance tests. The comprehensive, multiprocess workload tests were undertaken to document scalability, execution efficiency, and raw performance of workloads. 'What I found may surprise you,' Kennedy writes. 'Not only does Microsoft have a firm grasp of multicore tuning, but its scalability story promises to keep getting better with time. In other words, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are poised to reap ever greater performance benefits as Intel and AMD extend the number of cores in future editions of their processors.'"
Are we supposed to be surprised that the leading OS vendor, who's had deep, intertwined relationships for decades with hardware makers is exploiting that hardware properly?
Honest question: where's the news here?
Not really, wasn't one of the major complaints about Vista that they were changing the OS architecture to tune multicore processors to the detriment of single core processors?
Some great mathematics in this review... it also appears as if Vista isn't just not solving the problems presented to it, but also adds new ones to increase its own workload.
Fascinating...
I tried RTFA (sorry, please mod me done for this ;) but, after clicked the "print" version, I couldn't find anything that looked like a benchmark report. No numbers. No tables. No graphs. All I saw was a page of [[weasel words]] or something like that.
Sigh..
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Ok so who is faster XP, or Vista?
The header says Vista and Windows 7, but yet in the article:
It should come as no surprise that Windows 7 performs very much like its predecessor. In fact, during extensive multiprocess benchmark testing, Windows 7 essentially mirrored Vista in almost every scenario. Database tasks? Roughly 118 percent slower than XP on dual-core (Vista was 92 percent slower) and 19 percent slower than XP on quad-core (identical to Vista). Workflow? A respectable 38 percent slower than XP on dual-core (Vista was 98 percent slower) and 59 percent slower on quad-core (Vista was 66 percent slower).
http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/01/22/03TC-windows-multicore_4.html
So therefore Vista and Windows 7 suck in performance to XP?
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Basically, this article states the obvious: Windows XP 64 is just plain faster than Vista 64 or Win7 64. By a factor of 20-40%. But to understand why, you need to read the MONEY quote. Here it is:
It's the DRM baby. You strip that out of the Kernel, and Vista and Win7 will EASILY outpace XP with their more advanced and flexible SMP capability. Until Microsoft understands that people DO NOT WANT DRM and removes it from their newer OSes, these new OSes will continue to suffer from performance problems, and thusly, acceptance and sales problems.
Come on Microsoft. Apple has figured it out, DRM is a sales loser. Do you really want to keep wasting time on a loser technology in the midst of a global recession? You blew it with Vista, but you still have a chance with Win7. Offer people a DRM-Free kernel and Win7 will FLY off the shelves.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Try running Win 98 on Vista's minimum hardware. Hell, lets go whole hog here. Try running Win 3.1 on Vista's minimum hardware. (Okay, you might have to do a lot of work to get it running, but I'm just trying to make a point). I guarantee you that both 98 and 3.1 will run faster than XP on that hardware. By a lot. If it surprises you that vista and xp run slower on the same hardware than xp, then either you're not thinking things through, or you're not very bright. As stated, they are far newer. This means they have a much higher assumed baseline of technology that they can run against, which means that they have far more assumed resources to play with. So yeah, on the same system, Vista runs slower than XP. No surprise (at all, as far as I'm concerned). Honestly, all this speed stuff is pretty pointless. The question with OSes is never really about the fastest, or we would all still be using DOS. The question with OSes is are the fast ENOUGH. This is very subjective, but it basically boils down to: will they run what we want them to run in an acceptably small amount of time. On its original release, Vista did not. However, right now Vista is certainly running fast enough for me, and I expect Win 7 will to. But you're ALWAYS going to take a performance hit moving to an OS that utilizes new technology, and I don't care what OS you use.
As a HPC developer, there's a few areas where XP falls down. With the release of the new Core i7 line from Intel, the end of the FSB is in sight. Both Intel and AMD now use a ccNUMA memory architecture, which has tremendous implications on software design. In short, if your software isn't aware of the system's memory topology, you're going to end up with most of your memory traffic going over the processor interconnects and that's a substantial performance hit over going directly to memory (2-4 times slower).
XP's NUMA support is very weak. Sometimes the easiest solution is to write your own allocator (and preallocate huge chunks of ram).
And before somebody comes along and says 'no real HPC is done in Windows!' there are a lot of old, crusty engineering software packages that everybody is scared of porting.