[wyldckat]

Quick notes:

1. Read this thread:OpenFOAM benchmarks on various hardware
2. The bottleneck here is the number of memory channels, not the number of cores. Even if your CPU had 64 cores, it will not perform better than 8 cores, if there are only 4 memory channels available.

[Jurado]

Originally Posted by wyldckat

Quick notes:

1. Read this thread:OpenFOAM benchmarks on various hardware
2. The bottleneck here is the number of memory channels, not the number of cores. Even if your CPU had 64 cores, it will not perform better than 8 cores, if there are only 4 memory channels available.

Hello wyldckat,

Thanks for your answer, your thread is very instructive. But I am not sure to understand what are these "memory channel", I tried to look on google to try to understand it but I don't really do, could you explain it to me ? It is hardware right ? Is it the thing on which one connect the RAM ? ( Sorry i'm really not an expert in Hardware).

Also how can I know how much memory channel I have ? Do I have to open the computer ? ( Well i guess with your explanation i must have 10 used)



Than you.

[wyldckat]

Quick'ish answer:
From a previous post, you stated that the following CPU model is being used: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E7-4870 @2.40 GHz
You can find the specific details for it at Intel's website, specifically on this page: https://ark.intel.com/products/53579...-GTs-Intel-QPI
Quoting from that page:

Max # of Memory Channels: 4

[Description]
The number of memory channels refers to the bandwidth operation for real world application.

Wikipedia article on the topic of multiple memory channels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-...y_architecture

Google for "memory channels explained" to find more details. First video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D8fhsXqq4o


But to explain in a somewhat simple way, by way of comparison:

1. If you yourself have 2 arms, it's as if you had 1 CPU (your own brain) and can pick up 2 packages at the same time (one package with each arm).
2. Now if you are surrounded by 4 other people around you, that ask you to pick up 1 package for each one of them, this means that you will need to pick up 4 packages... but you only have 2 arms, so you will have to do at least 2 trips to bring them the packages they asked.
3. Now, even if you had 4 arms, and have 9 people around you, and if each one asks you to bring 1 package and if you need another package for yourself, this means that you need to pick up 10 packages, while only using 4 arms, means you need to do 3 trips to go get the packages.

Now, while you physically could use some additional hardware to make the job easier, the CPUs cannot do that. The E7-4870 CPU only has 4 memory channels and that means that 10 cores are sharing those 4 channels.


Still confused? Here is another thread with more details: AMD Ryzen Threadripper vs Intel Xeon, importance of cache and memory channels