Are Intel or AMD processors better with Altair FEKO?

s-SNOM_Researcher
s-SNOM_Researcher New Altair Community Member
edited February 2021 in Community Q&A

Is FEKO optimized to run with one or the other?

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Best Answer

  • Mel
    Mel Altair Community Member
    edited February 2021 Answer ✓

    Feko, historically, has been optimized to run on Intel. 

    The AMD performance will vary according to the type of problem to be solved. For example if it is mostly large Method of Moments models where linear algebra dominates, Intel would be faster. But other algorithms such as the planar Green's Function integrals might run faster on AMD compared to a similar (in terms of price) Intel CPU.

    In addition comparing different CPUs (even all from Intel or all from AMD) would already show a different parallel scaling / optimization potential in this regard.

    Without specific tests using specific CPUs and a specific Feko problem it is difficult to make firm statements.

    Feko will use the Intel libraries by default on AMD, but performance on AMD is better using the following environment variable:

    MKL_DEBUG_CPU_TYPE=5.

    This variable will cause MKL to disregard the CPU type check and will support optimizations up to and including AVX2.

Answers

  • Q.Nguyen-Dai
    Q.Nguyen-Dai Altair Community Member
    edited October 2020

    In general, you can run any FEM/CFD softwares on Intel or AMD cpu.

    But for some particular software, they use Intel compiler, with some optimization parameters for Intel. So you get a better performance on Intel. But this software runs also on AMD. IMHO, with the same frequency, same core number, same cpu cache, same technology,... you have to get the "same" performance. The difference about the performance, in this case, is very small.

  • Mel
    Mel Altair Community Member
    edited February 2021 Answer ✓

    Feko, historically, has been optimized to run on Intel. 

    The AMD performance will vary according to the type of problem to be solved. For example if it is mostly large Method of Moments models where linear algebra dominates, Intel would be faster. But other algorithms such as the planar Green's Function integrals might run faster on AMD compared to a similar (in terms of price) Intel CPU.

    In addition comparing different CPUs (even all from Intel or all from AMD) would already show a different parallel scaling / optimization potential in this regard.

    Without specific tests using specific CPUs and a specific Feko problem it is difficult to make firm statements.

    Feko will use the Intel libraries by default on AMD, but performance on AMD is better using the following environment variable:

    MKL_DEBUG_CPU_TYPE=5.

    This variable will cause MKL to disregard the CPU type check and will support optimizations up to and including AVX2.

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