SiSoftware Sandra 20/21-R17 – Even More Hybrid Optimisations

We are pleased to release R17 (version 31.109) update for Sandra 20/21 with further optimisations for hybrid designs (AlderLake, RaptorLake, etc.).

Sandra 20/21 Press Release

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Benchmarks, Hardware Support updates and fixes

Cache & Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
- Further improved/fixed hybrid bandwidth workload allocation when all cores are used, e.g. on Intel 12600K
Cluster Performance Contribution: All Memory/Cache Benchmarks
- It is the sum of the bandwidth of all cores in each cluster
- Reveals how much the big/P & LITTLE/E core clusters have contributed compute power wise to each benchmark score in percent, e.g. on Intel 12600K – CPU Arithmetic Benchmark:
  - 80% big/P Cluster – 20% LITTLE/E Atom cluster
  - Review showing these measurements: big/LITTLE cores Performance Analysis – AlderLake to RaptorLake
  - Note this also works on Arm64 big.LITTLE or DynamiQ SoCs
Core Performance Ratio: All Memory/Cache Benchmarks
- It is the ratio of the big/P Core vs. LITTLE/E core bandwidth
- Reveals just how much more performant the big/P Cores are vs. the LITTLE/E cores, e.g. on Intel 12600K – CPU Arithmetic Benchmark:
  - 2.15x big/P Core – 1.x LITTLE/E Atom core
  - Review showing these measurements: big/LITTLE cores Performance Analysis – AlderLake to RaptorLake
  - Note this also works on Arm64 big.LITTLE or DynamiQ SoCs
Future Hardware Support
- Additional AMD Ryzen 7000 (Zen4) support
  - Enabled DDR5 SPD (Hub, PMIC, TS) AMD information
- Additional Intel Sapphire Rapids (SRP-X/EX) support
- Preliminary Intel MeteorLake (MTL) support
- Preliminary Intel Granite Rapids (GRP-EX) support
  - Enabled DDR5 SPD (Hub, PMIC, TS) Intel information

Parallelism Benchmark Thread Combinations

Allows easy benchmarking of all cores/threads together or individually without rebooting into BIOS and disabling cores and/or SMT. The options are as follows:

Multi-Threading – All Cores/All Threads (big+LITTLE cores, all threads)	6C+4c / 16T
Multi-Threading – big/P Cores Threads (big cores’ threads only)	6C / 12T
Multi-Core – All Cores (big+LITTLE cores)	6C+4c / 10T
Multi-Core – big/P Cores only	6C / 6T
Multi-Core – LITTLE/E Atom cores only	4c / 4t

Cluster Performance Contribution & Core Performance Ratio

Allows simple reporting of hybrid performance contributions by breaking down the compute contribution of big/P and LITTLE/E clusters and thus the big/P Core : LITTLE/E Atom core performance ratio.

big/P Cores Threads	70%	70/6C -> 2.15x
LITTLE/E Atom cores threads	30%	30/4c -> 1x

Example of performance contribution & ratio on Intel Core i5 12600K (ADL):

Cluster Bandwidth Contribution (per Cluster type)

Memory Bandwidth
- Integer Memory Bandwidth : 64% big Cores Cluster – 32% LITTLE cores Cluster
- Float Memory Bandwidth : 65% big Cores Cluster – 32% LITTLE cores Cluster
Cache Bandwidth
- L1D (1st Level) Data Cache Bandwidth : 78% big Cores Cluster – 18% LITTLE cores Cluster
- L2 (2nd Level) Unified/Data Cache Bandwidth : 89% big Cores Cluster – 7% LITTLE cores Cluster
- L3 (3rd Level) Unified/Data Cache Bandwidth : 90% big Cores Cluster – 7% LITTLE cores Cluster

Note: Here we sum the memory bandwidth performance contribution for all cores in the type of cluster.

Note2: This feature also works on Arm64 big.LITTLE / DynamicQ SoCs, it is not tied to x86 Intel hybrid systems.

Cluster Bandwidth Ratio (per core type)

Memory Bandwidth
- Integer Memory Bandwidth : 1.3x big-Core – 1.0x LITTLE-core
- Float Memory Bandwidth : 1.4x big-Core – 1.0x LITTLE-core
Cache Bandwidth
- L1D (1st Level) Data Cache Bandwidth : 2.9x big-Core – 1.0x LITTLE-core
- L2 (2nd Level) Unified/Data Cache Bandwidth : 8.5x big-Core – 1.0x LITTLE-core
- L3 (3rd Level) Unified/Data Cache Bandwidth : 8.6x big-Core – 1.0x LITTLE-core

Note: Here we divide the cluster performance contribution by the number of cores in each cluster – and then work out the big/LITTLE ratio. If SMT is enabled or not, we still only count the number of cores per cluster, not threads.

Reviews using Sandra 20/21:

Update & Download

Commercial version customers can download the free updates from their software distributor; Lite users please download from your favourite download site.

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