Benchmarks

The following benchmarks should be taken with a pinch of salt: compilers differ, and latency measurements depend on everything from the phase of the moon onwards. However, for what they are worth:

Make	CPU	Speed	Memory	Streams	Latency	Linpack
Intel	P MMX	233MHz	2x??ns EDO DRAM	150MB/s	340ns	70MFLOPS[2]
DEC 3000/600	21064	175MHz	?? DRAM	100MB/s	600ns	88MFLOPS[2]
Intel	P II	350MHz	100MHz SDRAM	300MB/s	300ns	235MFLOPS[2]
Indigo2	R10000	195MHz		120MB/s	900ns	240MFLOPS[2]
AS600/5/266	21164	266MHz	8x60ns DRAM	150MB/s	450ns	310MFLOPS[2]
Intel	Celeron	533MHz	100MHz? SDRAM	290MB/s	300ns	310MFLOPS[2]
SB100	US IIe	500MHz	100MHz SDRAM	220MB/s	360ns	320MFLOPS[2]
Octane	R12000	300MHz		320MB/s	540ns	470MFLOPS
PW500au	21164A	500MHz	2x83MHz SDRAM	230MB/s	280ns	630MFLOPS
Intel	P III	1GHz	133MHz SDRAM	400MB/s	170ns	680MFLOPS
XP900	21264	463MHz	2x77MHz SDRAM	770MB/s	300ns	725MFLOPS
Octane	R12000	2x300MHz		450MB/s		910MFLOPS
XP1000	21264A	667MHz	4x83MHz SDRAM	1000MB/s	280ns	1060MFLOPS
V240	US IIIi	1GHz	2x222MHz DDR	980MB/s	135ns	1180MFLOPS
Intel	Pentium M	1.7GHz		1000MB/s	140ns	1360MFLOPS
V480	US III Cu	900MHz	4x75MHz SDRAM	1100MB/s	210ns	1430MFLOPS
280R	US III Cu	1.2GHz	4x75MHz SDRAM	1200MB/s	150ns	1730MFLOPS
Intel	P 4	1.5GHz	2xPC800 RDRAM	2100MB/s	210ns	2020MFLOPS
Intel	P 4	1.8GHz	266MHz DDR	1600MB/s	200ns	2340MFLOPS
V480	US III Cu	2x900MHz	4x75MHz SDRAM	2000MB/s		2780MFLOPS
Intel	Itanium 2	900MHz	2x266MHz DDR	1600MB/s	210ns	2900MFLOPS
AMD	Turion64	1.8GHz	333MHz DDR	2000MB/s	110ns	3000MFLOPS
Intel	P 4	2.4GHz	2xPC800 RDRAM	2200MB/s	170ns	3200MFLOPS
Intel	P 4	2.4GHz	2x266MHz DDR	2600MB/s	180ns	3100MFLOPS
280R	US III Cu	2x1.2GHz	4x75MHz SDRAM	1600MB/s		3360MFLOPS
Intel	P 4	2.67GHz	2xPC1066 RDRAM	3000MB/s	140ns	3700MFLOPS
Intel	P 4	2.8GHz	2x400MHz DDR	4200MB/s	110ns	3900MFLOPS
V40z	Opteron	2.4GHz	8x400MHz DDR	3950MB/s	120ns	3970MFLOPS
Intel	P D (1 core)	3.0GHz	2x533MHz DDR2	4600MB/s	135ns	4900MFLOPS
Intel	P 4 EM64T	3.4GHz	2x533MHz DDR2	4500MB/s	130ns	5000MFLOPS
Intel	P 4	2x2.4GHz	2x266MHz DDR	2600MB/s		5300MFLOPS
V480	US III Cu	4x900MHz	4x75MHz SDRAM			5350MFLOPS
Intel	Itanium 2	2x900MHz	2x266MHz DDR			5550MFLOPS
Intel	P4 EM64T Xeon	3.6GHz	2x400MHz DDR2	3900MB/s	140ns	5600MFLOPS
Intel	P 4	2x2.4GHz	2x266MHz DDR			5800MFLOPS[10]
V480	US III Cu	4x900MHz	4x75MHz SDRAM	2900MB/s		5830MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Itanium 2	2x900MHz	2x266MHz DDR			5850MFLOPS[10]
Dell R710	Nehalem	2.4GHz	6x800MHz DDR3	9500MB/s	120ns	6500MFLOPS
AMD	Ryzen (Zen)	3.2GHz	2x2400MHz DDR4	25,300MB/s	100ns	6580MFLOPS[10,MKL]
Dell 2970	Opteron	2.5GHz	4x800MHz DDR2	7700MB/s	100ns	7600MFLOPS
V40z	Opteron	2x2.4GHz	8x400MHz DDR	7900MB/s		7900MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Core2	2.4GHz	2x667MHz DDR2	5000MB/s	95ns	8200MFLOPS
AMD	Athlon II	3.0GHz	2x1333MHz DDR3	8500MB/s	130ns	9700MFLOPS[10]
Intel	P D (2 cores)	(2x)3.0GHz	2x533MHz DDR2	4500MB/s		10,000MFLOPS[10]
5000P	Xeon 5160	3.0GHz	8x667MHz DDR2	4000MB/s	120ns	10,000MFLOPS[10]
Intel	P4 EM64T Xeon	2x3.6GHz	2x400MHz DDR2	3450MB/s		10,700MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Nehalem QC	2.8GHz	3x1066MHz DDR3	12,200MB/s	95ns	10,900MFLOPS[10]
V40z	Opteron	4x2.4GHz	8x400MHz DDR	15,500MB/s		13,500MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Core2 DC	(2x)2.4GHz	2x667MHz DDR2	5000MB/s		15,300MFLOPS[10]
AMD	Athlon II	2x3.0GHz	2x1333MHz DDR3	12,700MB/s		19,300MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Sandybridge QC	3.2GHz	2x1333MHz DDR3	17,500MB/s	85ns	22,700MFLOPS[10]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen)	3.2GHz	2x2400MHz DDR4	25,300MB/s	100ns	24,400MFLOPS[10,OpenBLAS]
Intel	Core2 QC	(4x)2.4GHz	2x1066MHz DDR2	5600MB/s		31,800MFLOPS[10]
5000P	Xeon 5160	2x(2x)3.0GHz	8x667MHz DDR2	6400MB/s		34,500MFLOPS[10]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen) QC	(4x)3.2GHz	2x2400MHz DDR4	15,900MB/s		35,900MFLOPS[10,MKL]
Intel	Haswell QC	3.1GHz	2x1600MHz DDR3	20,000MB/s	76ns	39,500MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Nehalem QC	(4x)2.8GHz	3x1066MHz DDR3	19,200MB/s		42,000MFLOPS[10]
AMD	EPYC (Zen 3) 16C	3.0GHz	8x3200MHz DDR4	43,000MB/s	125ns	43,000MFLOPS[10, OpenBLAS]
Intel	Kaby Lake QC	3.0GHz	2x2400MHz DDR4	27,000MB/s	73ns	44,000MFLOPS[10]
Dell 2970	Opteron	2x(4x)2.5GHz	4x800MHz DDR2	20,800MB/s		45,000MFLOPS[10]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen 2) HC	3.6GHz	2x2666MHz DDR4	32,400MB/s	112ns	49,500MFLOPS[10,OpenBLAS]
Intel	Skylake QC	3.5GHz	2x2133MHz DDR4	26,500MB/s	77ns	50,000MFLOPS[10]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen 3) HC	3.7GHz	2x3200MHz DDR4	41,000MB/s	97ns	52,800MFLOPS[10,OpenBLAS]
Intel	Kaby Lake QC	3.7GHz	2x2400MHz DDR4	29,000MB/s	87ns	53,200MFLOPS[10]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen 4) HC	3.8GHz	2x4800MHz DDR5	56,300MB/s	116ns	54,100MFLOPS[10,OpenBLAS]
Intel	Xeon Gold 12C	2.6GHz	12x2666MHz DDR4	10,800MB/s	115ns	65,400MFLOPS[10]
Dell R710	Nehalem	2x(4x)2.4GHz	6x800MHz DDR3	26,000MB/s		68,500MFLOPS[10]
Sun X2270	Nehalem	2x(4x)2.66GHz	6x1066MHz DDR3	25,000MB/s		78,600MFLOPS[20]
Intel	Xeon W 2145	3.7GHz	4x2666MHz DDR4	18,900MB/s	115ns	82,600MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Sandybridge QC	(4x)3.2GHz	2x1333MHz DDR3	18,500MB/s		83,100MFLOPS[10]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen) QC	(4x)3.2GHz	2x2400MHz DDR4	31,700MB/s		88,000MFLOPS[10,OpenBLAS]
Intel	Ivybridge QC	(4x)3.3GHz	2x1600MHz DDR3	21,500MB/s		93,800MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Ivybridge HC	(6x)3.5GHz	4x1600MHz DDR3	42,700MB/s		117,000MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Haswell QC	(4x)3.1GHz	2x1600MHz DDR3	21,500MB/s		135,000MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Ivybridge HC	(6x)3.5GHz	4x1600MHz DDR3	42,700MB/s		146,000MFLOPS[20]
Intel	Haswell QC	(4x)3.1GHz	2x1600MHz DDR3	21,500MB/s		153,000MFLOPS[20]
Intel	Kaby Lake QC	(4x)3.0GHz	2x2400MHz DDR4	28,400MB/s		165,000MFLOPS[10]
Intel	Kaby Lake QC	(4x)3.7GHz	2x2400MHz DDR4	31,000MB/s		193,000MFLOPS[10]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen 2) HC	(6x)3.6GHz	2x2666MHz DDR4	34,700MB/s		267,000MFLOPS[10,OpenBLAS]
Intel	2xSandybridge OC	2x(8x)2.6GHz	8x1600MHz DDR3	70,000MB/s		280,000MFLOPS[20]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen 3) HC	(6x)3.7GHz	2x3200MHz DDR4	40,000MB/s		288,000MFLOPS[10,OpenBLAS]
AMD	Ryzen (Zen 4) HC	(6x)3.8GHz	2x4800MHz DDR5	56,200MB/s		303,000MFLOPS[10,OpenBLAS]
Intel	2xHaswell 10C	2x(10x)2.6GHz	8x2133MHz DDR4	108,000MB/s	112ns	475,000MFLOPS[20]
Intel	Xeon W 2145	(8x)3.7GHz	4x2666MHz DDR4	56,800MB/s		530,000MFLOPS[20]
Intel	2xHaswell 10C	2x(10x)2.6GHz	8x2133MHz DDR4	108,000MB/s		595,000MFLOPS[40]
AMD	EPYC (Zen 3) 16C	(16x)3.0GHz	8x3200MHz DDR4	146,000MB/s		648,000MFLOPS[20, OpenBLAS]
AMD	EPYC (Zen 3) 16C	(16x)3.0GHz	8x3200MHz DDR4	146,000MB/s		680,000MFLOPS[40, OpenBLAS]
Intel	2xXeon Gold 12C	2x(12x)2.6GHz	12x2666MHz DDR4	160,000MB/s		1,150,000MFLOPS[40]
Intel	2xXeon Gold 16C	2x(16x)2.1GHz	12x2666MHz DDR4	170,000MB/s		1,220,000MFLOPS[40]
Intel	2xXeon Gold 16C	2x(16x)2.1GHz	12x2666MHz DDR4	170,000MB/s		1,250,000MFLOPS[60]
Intel	2xXeon Gold 18C	2x(18x)2.3GHz	12x2666MHz DDR4	170,000MB/s		1,310,000MFLOPS[40]
Intel	2xXeon Gold 18C	2x(18x)2.3GHz	12x2666MHz DDR4			1,460,000MFLOPS[60]

In all cases the streams and latency results are for main memory, and the linpack result is for 5000x5000, except for those marked [2], where it is 2000x2000, and those marked [10] where it is 10000x10000, etc.

Notes

All forms of hyperthreading and overclocking are disabled (save for the Zen 2 Ryzen which resisted).

Streams measures memory bandwidth out of cache. The test runs use around half of the machine's memory in most cases. The timer used on the earlier Intel platforms has a resolution of just 0.01s, so the error bars on some of these results are large. This benchmark is important for codes which do unit-stride processing of large arrays (Castep).

Latency measured for random access over a 64MB (later machines, 1GB) array, and includes any TLB misses, except on Suns where these can be turned off by using large pages. This benchmark is important for codes which jump randomly all over memory (M$ Office).

Linpack measures the time taken to solve a 5000x5000 system of linear equations. It is pretty much the highest performance one can expect for a real problem, which in this case is matrix diagonalisation. Efficiency should increase with size (for large sizes), but the 5000x5000 case requires over 200MB, so not all computers can cope.

Compilers are an important part of the speed equation, and are barely tested by the above. Linpack is just a library call, the latency test is unoptimisable, and streams is either trivial to optimise, or perhaps as hard as easy for those systems which support software data prefetching (most of the above). However, different compilers and libraries were used with different entries above, which does give an advantage to more recent entries.

The above is rather unfair to Alphas, as it does not show the different ages of the machines. The Intel PII/350 is newer than the PW500au, for instance. It also lacks modern Alphas (DS25/ES45) which use 1GHz+ CPUs and 125MHz memory. Modern SGIs are also surely faster than the examples above.

More balanced benchmark suites are produced by SPEC, most notably the CPU2000 benchmark.

Thanks to AAM for the Pentium M result.