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Dell PowerEdge 1655MC User Manual

Page 3

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Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell PowerEdge 12

th

generation servers

iii

Contents

Executive summary ..................................................................................................... 5

1.

Introduction ....................................................................................................... 6

2.

Dell PowerEdge 12

th

generation servers and Intel Sandy Bridge-EP architecture ..................... 6

2.1.

Intel SandyBridge architecture .......................................................................... 7

3.

Overview of BIOS options ....................................................................................... 9

3.1.

System Profile .............................................................................................. 9

3.2.

Turbo Boost ............................................................................................... 12

3.3.

Node interleaving ........................................................................................ 12

3.4.

Logical Processor ......................................................................................... 13

3.5.

BIOS options specific to latency sensitive applications ........................................... 13

4.

Test bed and applications .................................................................................... 14

5.

Results and analysis ............................................................................................ 15

5.1.

Idle power ................................................................................................. 16

5.2.

System Profile ............................................................................................ 17

5.3.

Turbo Boost ............................................................................................... 19

5.4.

Node Interleaving ........................................................................................ 20

5.5.

Logical Processor ......................................................................................... 21

5.6.

C States, C1E on remote memory access ............................................................ 22

6.

Comparison to Dell PowerEdge 11

th

generation servers ................................................. 23

7.

Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 26

8.

References ....................................................................................................... 28

Appendix A – Summary of findings ................................................................................. 29

Appendix B – Dell Deployment Toolkit to modify BIOS options from the command line ................. 31

Tables

Table 1.

Dell PowerEdge 12

th

generation server models ....................................................... 7

Table 2.

Intel Sandy Bridge-based servers ........................................................................ 9

Table 3.

System Profile options .................................................................................. 10

Table 4.

Test bed details .......................................................................................... 14

Table 5.

Benchmark and application details ................................................................... 15

Table 6.

11

th

and 12

th

generation cluster test bed details ................................................... 24

Table 7.

Recommended BIOS setting ............................................................................ 26

Table 8.

DTK syscfg options for changing BIOS settings ...................................................... 31