The hit of the processor effect AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X it is more than evident. This processor 64-core, 128-thread AMDs is a combination of marketing and a show of strength. The company has released a highly powerful processor for Workstation and small servers, evidencing Intel. It's basically a way to sell the great work they have done with the Zen architecture.
In few cases, a user may need 64 cores, even 16 cores as is the case with the Ryzen 9 3950X. But whether we need them or not, there are limitations that have not been taken into account. It has scaled faster in the number of cores much faster than expected and that has started to be a problem for software developers.
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Table of Contents
Threadripper 3990X Features
We are going to do a brief review of this processor. As we said, it has 64 cores and 128 processing threads, which is amazing. This processor works at a base frequency of 2.9GHz and reaches 4.3GHz in Boost mode with a TDP of 280W. This processor also has 4MB of L1 cache, 32MB of L2 cache and 256MB of L3 cache.
This processor is based on the architecture Zen2@7nm, the most advanced from AMD to date. It allows the Threadripper 3990X to have that many cores and have a really tight TDP. Also this processor supports DDR4 @ 3200MHz in Quad-Channel. The first problem we find at this point is that it does not support ECC memories, which is a problem in certain cases.
Leaving aside the price of more than 4.000, this processor is not bad at all, on a technical level. It seems like the perfect solution for those involved in video editing, photography, CAD and CPU intensive software. But, in Anandtech they have come across reality and it is none other than the software is not prepared for this processor.
Windows 10 is not ready for 128 threads
Anandtech's colleagues have received one of these processors and have put it through all kinds of tests. But in the process they seem to have run into a seemingly unexpected problem. The Microsoft operating system, Windows 10, it seems not ready for so many cores and threads, especially so many threads.
Windows 10 Home supports 1 socket and a maximum of 64 cores. Windows 10 Pro, Pro Education and Education support up to 2 socket and 128 cores. This apparently falls within the specifications of the processor, but not really.
Microsoft offers in Windows 10 the option to enable threading, which allows better use of the threads. The problem is that it takes these threads as 'cores', not as threads, and that is where the problem begins. Only in threads it already matches the quota of cores or exceeds it in these two operating systems.
What's going on? In the Pro, Pro Education and Education versions what Windows 10 does is create two sockets in a dummy way. This causes us to have 2 64-wire socket, which negatively impacts processor performance.
Be careful, because this not only happens with this processor, the Intel Xeon Phi with 72 cores and 288 threads generate 5 sockets. This shows that the problem does not lie in whether it is an AMD processor or not, it is a problem in Windows 10. Microsoft did not think that commercial processors would reach so many cores so quickly and is not prepared. Something that does not happen in Windows Server, ready to support as many cores and threads as needed.
Negative impact on performance
Sure, generating two sockets causes a performance problem. We have a physical processor and not two, as Windows 10 indicates, which causes the load to not be distributed correctly. Software not developed to operate on multiple CPUs generates the load on one of the two simulated processors.
Generating two sockets, as the Windows 10 task manager shows, results in a slowdown in computing. To avoid this problem, you can disable multithreading mode. In this way we have a single socket again and some of the lost performance is recovered, not all.
Ideally, you should have multithreading enabled, but Windows 10 causes a performance loss in this mode. Disabling it improves performance, but it is not a solution either, since we do not get the full potential of the processor. Whoever acquires this Threadripper 3990X processor to work, should be aware that he needs a Windows 10 for Workstation or Enterprise, being more expensive licenses or even Windows Server.
Benchmark to Threadripper 3990X
Anandtech has published a series of synthetic software benchmarks that takes all the performance out of the processor. For this they have tested the Threadripper 3990X processor in a configuration of 64 cores and 64 threads under Windows 10 Pro. We have another combination of 64 cores and 128 threads under W10 Pro and another with the same parameters under W10 Enterprise.
We can see that there is no pattern, since depending on the benchmark one result or another is obtained. Evidence that we need a powerful Linux or a Windows Server, that the 'common' licenses do not work.
Conclusion
The problem itself is not AMD's Threadripper 3990X, the problem really is Windows 10 which is not intended for so many threads. There has been a brutal jump in the number of cores and threads and this is a real problem in certain cases. The benchmarks show that it is crazy and that depending on the case, we have better or worse performance. But this also happens with advanced solutions from Intel.
AMD has obviously innovated a lot by launching processors for 'gaming' with 16 cores and 32 threads or processors for Workstation with 64 cores and 128 threads, but the software is not ready. Depending on whether the software, not only Windows 10, is debugged or not for multisocket, we will have more or less performance.
Did AMD go over the top when launching the Threadripper 3990X? It's possible. Does this processor make sense outside of a very narrow market niche? Apparently not even in the niche to which it is destined because there is no optimization for it. Where does this escalation in the number of cores take us? To a ridiculous future with useless multi-core processors.
Be careful, because I am not saying it, Mark Papermaster, CTO of AMD already recognized in December that scaling the number of cores without control can be a waste of resources. This means that no matter how many cores we have, it does not mean that we have the best possible performance.
Well, what could you expect from a windows? use linux gentlemen