[Libre-soc-dev] maybe get ryzen 7950x for faster compilation and avx512

[Jacob Lifshay]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2022, 09:44 Timothy Pearson <tpearson at raptorengineering.com>
wrote:

> We may be able to offer some degree of discount / sponsorship for LibreSoC
> in this area.
>

Thanks!

>
> > * the 7950x waay outdoes the POWER9 in single threaded performance (very
> > important for silicon layout, hardware simulation, formal proofs, etc.
> > where we can be running code for multiple hours, taking 1/2 the time can
> > save a huge amount of time)
>
> If we're looking purely at performance vs. ownership, why should hardware
> be purchased at all vs. leasing a single powerful CPU from a cloud provider
> for the specific simulation runs you are talking about?
>

because cloud providers generally use server hardware which has much lower
clock rates than the 7950x (up to 5.7GHz vs. around 2-3GHz) which causes a
very substantial single-threaded performance gap of 2x. also, cloud
providers are often pretty expensive for nearly daily use of a powerful
server.

>
> > * avx512 would be very useful to be able to compare against.
>
> AVX512 could be tested with short term lease from a cloud provider, if
> such data needs to be gathered.
>

that's true.

Jacob

>