CPU2006 Flag Description
Sugon Sugon TC6600/CB50-G20 (Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4)

Copyright © 2006 Intel Corporation. All Rights Reserved.


Base Compiler Invocation

C benchmarks

C++ benchmarks


Peak Compiler Invocation

C benchmarks (except as noted below)

400.perlbench

445.gobmk

C++ benchmarks (except as noted below)

473.astar


Base Portability Flags

400.perlbench

401.bzip2

403.gcc

429.mcf

445.gobmk

456.hmmer

458.sjeng

462.libquantum

464.h264ref

471.omnetpp

473.astar

483.xalancbmk


Peak Portability Flags

400.perlbench

401.bzip2

403.gcc

429.mcf

445.gobmk

456.hmmer

458.sjeng

462.libquantum

464.h264ref

471.omnetpp

473.astar

483.xalancbmk


Base Optimization Flags

C benchmarks

C++ benchmarks


Peak Optimization Flags

C benchmarks

400.perlbench

401.bzip2

403.gcc

429.mcf

445.gobmk

456.hmmer

458.sjeng

462.libquantum

464.h264ref

C++ benchmarks

471.omnetpp

473.astar

483.xalancbmk


Base Other Flags

C benchmarks

403.gcc


Peak Other Flags

C benchmarks

403.gcc


Implicitly Included Flags

This section contains descriptions of flags that were included implicitly by other flags, but which do not have a permanent home at SPEC.


Commands and Options Used to Submit Benchmark Runs

submit= MYMASK=`printf '0x%x' $((1<<$SPECCOPYNUM))`; /usr/bin/taskset $MYMASK $command
When running multiple copies of benchmarks, the SPEC config file feature submit is used to cause individual jobs to be bound to specific processors. This specific submit command, using taskset, is used for Linux64 systems without numactl.
Here is a brief guide to understanding the specific command which will be found in the config file:
submit= numactl --localalloc --physcpubind=$SPECCOPYNUM $command
When running multiple copies of benchmarks, the SPEC config file feature submit is used to cause individual jobs to be bound to specific processors. This specific submit command is used for Linux64 systems with support for numactl.
Here is a brief guide to understanding the specific command which will be found in the config file:

Shell, Environment, and Other Software Settings

numactl --interleave=all "runspec command"
Launching a process with numactl --interleave=all sets the memory interleave policy so that memory will be allocated using round robin on nodes. When memory cannot be allocated on the current interleave target fall back to other nodes.
KMP_STACKSIZE
Specify stack size to be allocated for each thread.
KMP_AFFINITY
Syntax: KMP_AFFINITY=[<modifier>,...]<type>[,<permute>][,<offset>]
The value for the environment variable KMP_AFFINITY affects how the threads from an auto-parallelized program are scheduled across processors.
It applies to binaries built with -openmp and -parallel (Linux and Mac OS X) or /Qopenmp and /Qparallel (Windows).
modifier:
    granularity=fine Causes each OpenMP thread to be bound to a single thread context.
type:
    compact Specifying compact assigns the OpenMP thread <n>+1 to a free thread context as close as possible to the thread context where the <n> OpenMP thread was placed.
    scatter Specifying scatter distributes the threads as evenly as possible across the entire system.
permute: The permute specifier is an integer value controls which levels are most significant when sorting the machine topology map. A value for permute forces the mappings to make the specified number of most significant levels of the sort the least significant, and it inverts the order of significance.
offset: The offset specifier indicates the starting position for thread assignment.

Please see the Thread Affinity Interface article in the Intel Composer XE Documentation for more details.

Example: KMP_AFFINITY=granularity=fine,scatter
Specifying granularity=fine selects the finest granularity level and causes each OpenMP or auto-par thread to be bound to a single thread context.
This ensures that there is only one thread per core on cores supporting HyperThreading Technology
Specifying scatter distributes the threads as evenly as possible across the entire system.
Hence a combination of these two options, will spread the threads evenly across sockets, with one thread per physical core.

Example: KMP_AFFINITY=compact,1,0
Specifying compact will assign the n+1 thread to a free thread context as close as possible to thread n.
A default granularity=core is implied if no granularity is explicitly specified.
Specifying 1,0 sets permute and offset values of the thread assignment.
With a permute value of 1, thread n+1 is assigned to a consecutive core. With an offset of 0, the process's first thread 0 will be assigned to thread 0.
The same behavior is exhibited in a multisocket system.
OMP_NUM_THREADS
Sets the maximum number of threads to use for OpenMP* parallel regions if no other value is specified in the application. This environment variable applies to both -openmp and -parallel (Linux and Mac OS X) or /Qopenmp and /Qparallel (Windows). Example syntax on a Linux system with 8 cores: export OMP_NUM_THREADS=8
Set stack size to unlimited
The command "ulimit -s unlimited" is used to set the stack size limit to unlimited.
Free the file system page cache
The command "echo 1> /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches" is used to free up the filesystem page cache.

Red Hat Specific features

Transparent Huge Pages
On RedHat EL 6 and later, Transparent Hugepages increase the memory page size from 4 kilobytes to 2 megabytes. Transparent Hugepages provide significant performance advantages on systems with highly contended resources and large memory workloads. If memory utilization is too high or memory is badly fragmented which prevents hugepages being allocated, the kernel will assign smaller 4k pages instead.
Hugepages are used by default unless the /sys/kernel/mm/redhat_transparent_hugepage/enabled field is changed from its RedHat EL6 default of 'always'.

Operating System Tuning Parameters

OS Tuning

Minimal Installation of OS

Select only test related features when installing the operating system, which may cause many services uninstalled and thus may reduce the consumption of resources by the operation system itself.In accordance with the following ways to install operating system:

ulimit -s [n | unlimited] (Linux)

Sets the stack size to n kbytes, or unlimited to allow the stack size to grow without limit.

Tmpfs Filesystem Setting

Tmpfs is a file system on which everything is kept in virtual memory and no files will be created on the hard drive; the tmpfs will used swap space as backing store in case of low memory situations. This feature has a much negative effect on the I/O load and system performance.

Transparent HugePages

Transparent HugePages increase the memory page size from 4KB to 2MB. This feature provide significant performance advantages on systems with highly contended resources and the memory workloads. If memory utilization is too high or memory is badly fragmented which prevents hugepages being allocated, the kernel will assign smaller 4K pages instead.

On RHEL6 and later, Transparent Hugepages are used by default if /sys/kernel/mm/redhat_transparent_hugepage/enabled is set to always. The default value is always. On SUSE SLES11 and later and on NLAS V7U2, Transparent Hugepages are used by default if /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepages/enabled is set to always. The default value is always.


Firmware / BIOS / Microcode Settings

Power Technology

This BIOS switch allows 3 options:"Disable", "Energy Efficient" and "Custom". "Energy Efficent" is the default value and it's for power saving. "Custom" is for personal customization and only when the switch is set as this value, the submemus, including "CPU HWPM State Control","CPU C State Control","CPU T State Control" and "CPU advanced PM Tuning" are open for configuring.

Enable CPU HWPM

This switch is included in the "CPU HWPM State Control" menu. It allows 3 values:"Disable","HWPM NATIVE MODE", "HWPM OOB MODE". Default is "Disable". Disable this option will help to improve the performance of system under test.

Package C State limit

This switch is included in "CPU C State Control" menu.It allows 4 values:"C0/C1 state", "C2 state", "C6(non Retention) state" and "C6(Retention) state". Default is "C6(Retention) state", which causes the CPU to enter a low-power mode when the CPU is idle. When set as "C0/C1 state", all of the cores are locked at the maxium performance and will cause a large consumption of power.

Enhanced Halt State (C1E)

This switch is included in "CPU C State Control" menu.Enabling this option which is the default allows the processor to transmit to its minimum frequency when entering the power state C1. If the switch is disabled the CPU stays at its maximum frequency in C1. Because of the increase of power consumption users should only select this option after performing application benchmarking to verify improved performance in their environment.

ACPI T-States

This switch is included in "CPU T State Control" menu. Enable / Disable this switch will activate/inactivate CPU throttling by operating system.Throttling reduces power consumption.The default value is "Enable".Disable this feature will contribute to high performance but may also cause high power consumption.

Energy Performance BIAS Setting.

This BIOS switch is included in the "Energy Perf BIAS" menu, which is a submenu of "CPU advanced PM Tuning". It allows 4 options: "Balanced performance", "Performance", "Balanced Power" and "Power". The default is "Balanced Performance", which has been optimized to maximum power savings with minimal impact on performance. "Performance" disables all power management options with any impact on performance. "Balanced Power" is optimized for power efficiency and "Power" for power savings.The two options "Balanced Performance" and "Balanced Power" should always be the first choice as both options optimize the efficiency of the system. In cases where the performance is not sufficient or the power consumption is too high the two options "Performance" or "Power" could be an alternative.

Turbo Mode:

Enabling turbo mode can boost the overall CPU performance when all CPU cores are not being fully utilized.

Hyper-threading:

This BIOS setting enables/disables Intel's Hyper-Threading (HT) Technology. With HT Technology, the operating system can execute two threads in parallel within each processor core.

NUMA:

This BIOS option sets memory accessing mode. NUMA is as Non Uniform Memory Access. If this option is enabled, each CPU chip can only access memory within its own node.

COD Enable

This switch could be found by the following path: "Chipset Configuration"->"North Bridge"->"QPI Configuration"->"QPI General Configuration"->"COD Enable". This switch allows 3 values: "Disable","Enable","Auto". Default is "Auto", which is equally to"Disable". When enable this option, the system will work on "Cluster on Die" mode, which logically splits a socket into 2 NUMA domains that are exposed to the OS with half the amount of cores and LLC assigned to each NUMA domain in a socket. This mode utilizes an on-die directory cache in memory directory bits to determine whether a snoop needs to be sent. Use this mode for highly NUMA optimized workloads to get the lowest local memory latency and highest local memory bandwidth for NUMA workloads.

Fan Mode

This option is designed in Baseboard Management Controller and it could be seen when open BMC homepage in a browser. This switch allows 3 options to set:"Set Fan to Standard Speed", "Set Fan to Full Speed", "Set Fan to HeavyIO Speed". And default is "Set Fan to Standard Speed".


Flag description origin markings:

[user] Indicates that the flag description came from the user flags file.
[suite] Indicates that the flag description came from the suite-wide flags file.
[benchmark] Indicates that the flag description came from a per-benchmark flags file.

The flags files that were used to format this result can be browsed at
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/flags/Intel-ic16.0-official-linux64.html,
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/flags/Sugon-Platform-Settings-V1.2-BDW-revB.html.

You can also download the XML flags sources by saving the following links:
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/flags/Intel-ic16.0-official-linux64.xml,
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/flags/Sugon-Platform-Settings-V1.2-BDW-revB.xml.


For questions about the meanings of these flags, please contact the tester.
For other inquiries, please contact webmaster@spec.org
Copyright 2006-2016 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
Tested with SPEC CPU2006 v1.2.
Report generated on Tue Nov 15 16:06:13 2016 by SPEC CPU2006 flags formatter v6906.