June 3, 2009
Technology Trends: FDTD Solutions leverages new multi-core processors to boost parallel performance
Intel'S Core I7 quad-core processor provides 3X boost to compute speeds
Recently, advances in desktop processor performance have been focused on adding additional processor cores instead of increasing the clock rate. This shift from serial to parallel processing is largely due to technological limits that have been reached in the speed of the underlying electronics. While parallel processing is a means to continue growing processor performance indefinitely, it requires software that is capable of operating in parallel. FDTD Solutions has been designed to support a variety of parallel computer hardware, including multi-core processors. Recent benchmarks of realistic, three-dimensional problems of interest demonstrate that FDTD Solutions running on Intel's Core i7 processor provides a 3 times performance improvement when running in parallel.
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The Benchmarks
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Our benchmarks for performance consist of 2 common applications for FDTD Solutions - a CMOS image sensor structure and an antireflective structure on the surface of a solar cell. These models represent realistic applications that employ the advanced features of FDTD Solutions such as the treatment of dispersive and lossy materials via proprietary multi-coefficient material models (see our MCM whitepaper for more information), and the use of FDTD Solutions' graded mesh technology. We focus on real problems of interest because benchmarking real applications gives results that can be trusted to be representative of other problems of interest.
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Figure 1. CMOS Image Sensor
RAM requirements: 5GB
Materials: Silicon, SiN, SiO2, color filters, perfect electrical conductor
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Figure 2. Plasmonic Solar Cell
RAM requirements: 400 MB
Materials: Silicon, silver
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The Test Systems
The principal system for this test is a desktop PC based on the Intel Core i7 processor. This complete system retails for approximately US$1,200 as of the Spring 2009. The Intel Core i7 processor contains 4 processor cores, but due to Intel's Hyper-Threading technology it can handle 8 parallel tasks concurrently. Perhaps the most notable difference of the Core i7 processor over previous generations is its significantly boosted memory performance. The Core i7 uses the new DDR3 memory technology which has much higher speeds than the older DDR2 generation. Additionally, Intel uses 3 memory channels, effectively tripling the memory bandwidth. To complete this memory upgrade, Intel has integrated the memory controller onto the processor chip, removing some performance bottlenecks of previous generations. This dramatic increase in memory bandwidth is good news for memory intensive applications such as FDTD Solutions.
Additionally, we benchmarked a reference system that is approximately 12 months older than the Core i7 system and that sold at a similar price point. This desktop system is based on an Intel Xeon dual-core processor and serves to show the progress that has been made in performance over the past 12-18 months.
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Core i7 System Specs
| Processor |
Intel Core i7 920 |
| Motherboard |
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R |
| Video Card |
ASUS EN8400GS |
| Memory |
6GB Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3N9K3/6G |
| Storage |
250GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 |
| Operating System |
Windows Vista Business x64 |
Xeon System Specs
| Processor |
Intel Xeon E3110 |
| Motherboard /Video Card |
Intel DG33FB |
| Memory |
8GB Kingston ValueRAM
KVR667D2N5K2/4G |
| Storage |
80GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 |
| Operating System |
Windows Vista Business x64 |
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Performance Results
The graph below shows the relative performance results of testing the benchmark structures of Figure 1 on the specified test systems. While we do not recommend running FDTD Solutions on a single processor when multiple cores are available, this result allows us to see the gain in performance due to the parallel nature of FDTD Solutions. Comparing the performance of the Core i7 processor in parallel mode (red bars) versus serial mode (green bars) shows that there is approximately a 3 times performance improvement by running in parallel. This performance is enabled by the parallel nature of FDTD Solutions. Likewise, comparing the Core i7 performance (red bars) to the reference Xeon system performance (blue bars) we can see that the Core i7 system is more than 3 times faster. This is significant for hardware that is only 12 months newer. Moore's law suggests that processor performance doubles approximately every 24 months, so in this case the Core i7 has significantly exceeded that prediction!
Figure 3. Computing performance of the test systems for the two benchmark structures of Figure 1.
where we have set the reference to be the peak parallel performance of FDTD Solutions on the Xeon system (blue bars). The performance on the Core i7 system if we run FDTD Solutions serially (parallel mode disabled) is shown by the green bars.
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The shift towards parallel processing is clearly a trend which will continue. As the number of processor cores increases, only software supporting parallel processing will be able to leverage this increased performance. With its long history of parallel hardware support, FDTD Solutions enables designers to take advantage of these advancements.
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