mersenneforum.org AVX512 hardware recommendations?
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 2020-05-22, 22:37 #1 kriesel     "TF79LL86GIMPS96gpu17" Mar 2017 US midwest 2·2,311 Posts AVX512 hardware recommendations? Please suggest a cost effective reliable laptop that supports mlucas and prime95 AVX512 operation. One with a keyboard that lasts would be good. (My Dell G3 keyboard is approaching a year old and already certain keys are unreliable.)
 2020-05-22, 23:03 #2 M344587487     "Composite as Heck" Oct 2017 2×7×47 Posts Jury is still out on the P95 performance of the Ryzen 4000 mobile chips (Zen 2). It's AVX2 not AVX512 but in a lot of the typical benchmarks even the lower end Ryzen parts are beating the higher end intel parts, notably power consumption looks to be in Ryzen's favour but the cache has been reduced which may affect P95 heavily. The match up is interesting at least, an efficient instruction set on an inefficient node vs a less efficient instruction set on a more efficient node. But as always, if the grunt is purely for P95 then you're better off getting a cheap laptop and putting the saved pennies towards another Radeon VII instead.
 2020-05-22, 23:23 #3 mackerel     Feb 2016 UK 389 Posts I believe the mobile Ice Lake implementations with AVX-512 are single unit, so may not offer any more throughput than AVX2 anyway. Two unit AVX-512 is on the HEDT platform and some Xeons. The smaller cache on mobile Zen 2 CPUs (compared to desktop) is a concern, but it depends on what tests you're doing. The other "problem" with Zen in general is the CCX nature, and limited internal bandwidth back to ram, although I don't know if that applies to the mobile parts, it does on the desktop ones. Worth seeking out benchmarks to compare options. I'm not sure I'd want any laptop to run this type of load for a sustained time.
 2020-05-23, 00:25 #4 kriesel     "TF79LL86GIMPS96gpu17" Mar 2017 US midwest 10010000011102 Posts The point of requiring AVX512 is to be able to test prime95 on exponents that AVX2 or FMA3 hardware won't run, and builds of mlucas and mfactor for AVX512. It would be my only AVX512 hardware. Re laptops running GIMPS software at high duty cycle, my HP G60-B72 is in year 10 of that and the keyboard still works too. The clamshell hinge anchors broke after too many dives from the arm of the couch to the carpet, but it still works. Alas it is a lowly i3-370M. The Dell G3 i7-8750H is under extended warranty so perhaps it will go home to Dell for keyboard repair at some point. Since it's 6-core and also has a discrete gtx1050Ti gpu, its keyboard can get uncomfortably hot. Radeon VIIs are great. I'm not averse to adding some. But this inquiry is for a different purpose, different software, not raw throughput/watt-hour in gpuowl. Last fiddled with by kriesel on 2020-05-23 at 00:30
 2020-05-23, 22:16 #5 mackerel     Feb 2016 UK 1100001012 Posts Is it the case that Prime95 can do some work with AVX-512 it can't without? My understanding was AVX-512 is more a throughput thing in this use case. It does more of the same, not doing something new as such. Not familiar with the other software.
2020-05-23, 23:14   #6
ewmayer
2ω=0

Sep 2002
República de California

2·59·83 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by mackerel Is it the case that Prime95 can do some work with AVX-512 it can't without? My understanding was AVX-512 is more a throughput thing in this use case. It does more of the same, not doing something new as such. Not familiar with the other software.
ISTR - soeone please correct me if I'm wrong - that Prime95's expo limit depends on the width of the SIMD supported by the architecture. Not sure how fundamental this limit is, though, i.e. whether, say, upping it for AVX2 is a mere matter of fiddling a #define or whether there is an FFT-code-related reason for the limits to be lower for AVX2 than for AVX-512.

Ken, not nec. the cheapest solution, but have a gander at the roadmap for the Intel NUC for a possible compact-footprint (my Broadwell/AVX2 one is on back of my monitor) option.

2020-05-24, 23:59   #7
kriesel

"TF79LL86GIMPS96gpu17"
Mar 2017
US midwest

2×2,311 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by ewmayer Ken, not nec. the cheapest solution, but have a gander at the roadmap for the Intel NUC for a possible compact-footprint (my Broadwell/AVX2 one is on back of my monitor) option.
Does any NUC offer AVX512? AVX512 is required for prime95 / mprime above 920.8M exponent computations involving ffts, as I understand it; everything except TF which I'm unsure of and regard as moot. See https://www.mersenneforum.org/showth...374#post546374

Last fiddled with by kriesel on 2020-05-25 at 00:25

2020-05-25, 00:01   #8
Mysticial

Sep 2016

32910 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by kriesel Does any NUC offer AVX512?

The 8121U Cannon Lake. Discontinued though I think.

2020-05-25, 00:14   #9
ewmayer
2ω=0

Sep 2002
República de California

2×59×83 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by Mysticial The 8121U Cannon Lake. Discontinued though I think.
So we have to go back (to late 2018) not forward to find avx-512-supporting NUCs ... that could be ideal for Ken's needs, if he could score a used onesuch somewhere.

Here a couple online reviews:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13405...ep-dive-review

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/in...ing,38191.html

Last fiddled with by ewmayer on 2020-05-25 at 00:17

 2020-05-25, 16:39 #10 kriesel     "TF79LL86GIMPS96gpu17" Mar 2017 US midwest 110168 Posts Found a refurb i8121U based complete little box for <$300, <$330 with shipping and taxes. They still have several left. The following items are included in the box: Intel NUC 8 Home, a Mini PC with Windows 10 - NUC8i3CYSM, with the following components already installed: Intel NUC Board NUC8i3CYB, with soldered-down dual-core Intel Core i3 processor 8121U Discrete graphic card AMD Radeon 540 (soldered down) Intel Wireless-AC 9560 module (soldered down) Two wireless antennas 8GB LPDDR4 2400 MHz memory (soldered down) Pre-installed 1TB 2.5-inch HDD Operating system Windows 10 19V power adapter with US Power Cord When WSL2 goes to general release, it might make a handy little split-personality Win10/linux system. Still would like to find a laptop AVX512 with 4 cores or better, 8 threads w/ hyperthreaded, 17" screen, manufacturer known for durability (several years heavy use). Last fiddled with by kriesel on 2020-05-25 at 16:55
2020-05-25, 20:53   #11
ewmayer
2ω=0

Sep 2002
República de California

231028 Posts

Found another Anandtech deep-dive review from 25 Jan 2019 which mentions how hard it is to find any kind of laptop using the 10nm Cannon Lake Core i3-8121U - they found just one, a budget-priced educational-focused[!] laptop from Lenovo for the China market. Reviewer notes the laptop was poorly designed, but has some interesting comments re. the "disappointing" early releases of Intel's 10nm process node:

Intel's 10nm Cannon Lake and Core i3-8121U Deep Dive Review | Ian Cutress, Anandtech -- from the conclusion on page 14 (did I mention this was a deep-dive review?), "Conclusion: I Actually Used the Cannon Lake Laptop as a Daily System":
Quote:
I similarly could use a compact-size AVX-512-capable system for playing with code/build, especially some of the later-released portions of the instruction set not supported by the KNL I did my AVX-512 Mlucas code-dev on.

Found a "like new" system matching Ken's specs above for $255 and free-shipping on Amazon - ordered, will likely ditch the Win10 install for a clean Ubuntu 19.10 one, or perhaps co-install the latter. It will be interesting to compare the throughput with that of an AVX2 build on my venerable dual-core Broadwell NUC, which is ~1/2" lower-profile due it using an M2 module versus the SSD on the just-ordered one. (But a 1TB SSD is a nice chunk of new storage - hell, that is worth over$100 by itself.)

Question: Does it make sense to use the Radeon 540 GPU on these for either TF or LL/PRP testing? Getting some decent GIMPS work from that would be a nice bonus.

Last fiddled with by ewmayer on 2020-05-26 at 00:16

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