[Pw_forum] FX8350 and Quantum Espresso

[Filippo Spiga]

Dear Jan,

On Apr 30, 2013, at 3:37 PM, Jan Gryko <gryko at jsu.edu> wrote:
> Does anyone have experience running QE on AMD FX 8350 or FX 8320 eight-core
> PC?  There are several posts on the Forum about Intel 7/AMD dating back
> to 2009, but I do not see anything about the PC using the newest FX AMD processors.
> Right now it is possible to build FX8350 (8core, 4 GHz, 16GB memory) for less than $700.00,
> or with 32 GB memory for additional $150.00.  


I personally never heard about HPC systems or high-end server for HPC based on AMD microprocessor with Piledriver microarchitecture. Based on wikipedia this Piledriver architecture implements the same "module" philosophy of AMD Bulldozer. So one floating-point scheduler unit that dispatches FP calculations inside two distinct pipelines each one 128-bit wide. How efficiently FP operations are scheduled… no idea. I probably need to study more how Bulldozer AMD architecture works.

From a pure QE perspective, we do not have the possibility to try every single CPU architecture on the market. I tried QE on different HPC systems equipped with AMD Bulldozer or AMD Interlagos chips. My personal feeling is that Intel sandy bridge is better but I do not have quantitative numbers to prove my statement. I am curious too to see if some user n the mailing-list has some feedback to share about AMD FX83xx series.

Speaking about the memory on the system, it depends by the average size of the systems you are going to investigate. Memory is never enough… 

Good luck
Filippo

--
Mr. Filippo SPIGA, M.Sc.
http://filippospiga.me ~ skype: filippo.spiga

«Nobody will drive us out of Cantor's paradise.» ~ David Hilbert

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