8-STABLE performance issues on Supermicro Core i7

George Neville-Neil gnn at neville-neil.com
Mon May 3 21:09:50 UTC 2010


On May 1, 2010, at 11:10 , Bryce Edwards wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I've got a new Supermicro X58 system with an Intel Core i7 930 with 6
> GB ram that is not performing nearly as fast as it should in many ways
> (compiling, network transfers).  To give an example, it has been
> building the gcc44 port for about 10 hours now and at the same time
> rsync'ing from a Linux box on the same Gigabit network is only getting
> throughput of between 10-25 MB/sec.  When I did a buildkernel for
> 8-STABLE, it took 17 hours!
> 
> In the BIOS, I have played with a few settings and some actually made
> it worse.  What I have done now is disabled Hyperthreading and
> Speedstep.  I have attached the dmesg details, and here's some system
> info and then some system stats:
> 
> 
> bryce at tahiti[~]>uname -a
> FreeBSD tahiti.bryce.net 8.0-STABLE FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE #0: Wed Apr 28
> 10:53:37 CDT 2010
> root at tahiti.bryce.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
> 
> 
> 
> bryce at tahiti[~]>cat /boot/loader.conf
> ahci_load="YES"
> ichsmb_load="YES"
> smb_load="YES"
> coretemp_load="YES"
> 
> zfs_load="YES"
> vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:system"
> 
> hint.p4tcc.0.disabled=1
> hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled=1
> 
> 
> bryce at tahiti[~]>cat /etc/sysctl.conf
> kern.timecounter.hardware=HPET
> 
> 
> bryce at tahiti[~]>vmstat 1
> procs      memory      page                    disks     faults         cpu
> r b w     avm    fre   flt  re  pi  po    fr  sr ad0 ad1   in   sy
> cs us sy id
> 5 0 0   1068M  3478M   572   1   1   0   862   0   0   0 9370 16514
> 16157 71 22  7
> 5 0 0   1068M  3478M     2   0   0   0     0   0   0   0 8008 14504
> 11716 81 17  2
> 5 0 0   1068M  3478M     0   0   0   0     0   0   0   0 12429 22323
> 18125 77 23  0
> 5 0 0   1068M  3478M     0   0   0   0     0   0   0   0 12348 22125
> 17988 73 27  0
> 
> 
> bryce at tahiti[~]>vmstat -i
> interrupt                          total       rate
> irq1: atkbd0                        9291          0
> irq17: fwohci0                         1          0
> cpu0: timer                     75416246       2000
> irq256: em0                    137590284       3649
> irq257: em0                    206367605       5473
> irq260: em0                            1          0
> irq266: ahci0                    9892384        262
> cpu2: timer                     75415653       2000
> cpu3: timer                     75415702       2000
> cpu1: timer                     75415561       2000
> Total                          655522728      17385
> 
> 
> bryce at tahiti[~]>netstat -I em0 -h 1
>            input          (em0)           output
>   packets  errs idrops      bytes    packets  errs      bytes colls
>      7.7K     0     0        11M       7.2K     0       475K     0
>      8.1K     0     0        12M       7.4K     0       491K     0
>      7.8K     0     0        11M       7.2K     0       476K     0
> 
> bryce at tahiti[/usr/adm]>iostat 1
>       tty            ada0             ada1             ada2             cpu
> tin  tout  KB/t tps  MB/s   KB/t tps  MB/s   KB/t tps  MB/s  us ni sy in id
>   0   108 22.35   3  0.07  20.61   3  0.07  58.60   0  0.00  71  0  4 17  7
>   0   222 64.00   1  0.06  128.00   1  0.12   0.00   0  0.00  87  0  2 11  0

First thing to try.  Turn off Legacy USB in the BIOS.

Is this a 2 CPU machine with only one CPU installed?  Make sure your memory is all
in the correct slots, on modern (non Front Side Bus) machines like Nehalem
only the memory in the slots that are adjacent to a CPU are seen by the CPU.

I gather you have a kernel with INVARIANTS, WITNESS and the like turned off, correct?

Best,
George



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