8-STABLE performance issues on Supermicro Core i7

[Bryce Edwards]

Bingo, looks it was the Legacy USB setting in the BIOS.  I had it on
"Auto" (default) and the docs say it will disable unless there is
legacy USB devices.

I have now put all the other BIOS options to default (except enabling
AHCI) and here's what buildworld now looks like:

        2h39m29.20s real                11h35m35.36s user
 3h28m19.15s sys

Now I need to go research more about this to understand more about the
Legacy USB behavior.

::Bryce::


On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 1:34 PM, George Neville-Neil
<gnn at neville-neil.com> wrote:
>
> On May 1, 2010, at 11:10 , Bryce Edwards wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've got a new Supermicro X58 system with an Intel Core i7 930 with 6
>> GB ram that is not performing nearly as fast as it should in many ways
>> (compiling, network transfers).  To give an example, it has been
>> building the gcc44 port for about 10 hours now and at the same time
>> rsync'ing from a Linux box on the same Gigabit network is only getting
>> throughput of between 10-25 MB/sec.  When I did a buildkernel for
>> 8-STABLE, it took 17 hours!
>>
>> In the BIOS, I have played with a few settings and some actually made
>> it worse.  What I have done now is disabled Hyperthreading and
>> Speedstep.  I have attached the dmesg details, and here's some system
>> info and then some system stats:
>>
>>
>> bryce at tahiti[~]>uname -a
>> FreeBSD tahiti.bryce.net 8.0-STABLE FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE #0: Wed Apr 28
>> 10:53:37 CDT 2010
>> root at tahiti.bryce.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
>>
>>
>>
>> bryce at tahiti[~]>cat /boot/loader.conf
>> ahci_load="YES"
>> ichsmb_load="YES"
>> smb_load="YES"
>> coretemp_load="YES"
>>
>> zfs_load="YES"
>> vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:system"
>>
>> hint.p4tcc.0.disabled=1
>> hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled=1
>>
>>
>> bryce at tahiti[~]>cat /etc/sysctl.conf
>> kern.timecounter.hardware=HPET
>>
>>
>> bryce at tahiti[~]>vmstat 1
>> procs      memory      page                    disks     faults         cpu
>> r b w     avm    fre   flt  re  pi  po    fr  sr ad0 ad1   in   sy
>> cs us sy id
>> 5 0 0   1068M  3478M   572   1   1   0   862   0   0   0 9370 16514
>> 16157 71 22  7
>> 5 0 0   1068M  3478M     2   0   0   0     0   0   0   0 8008 14504
>> 11716 81 17  2
>> 5 0 0   1068M  3478M     0   0   0   0     0   0   0   0 12429 22323
>> 18125 77 23  0
>> 5 0 0   1068M  3478M     0   0   0   0     0   0   0   0 12348 22125
>> 17988 73 27  0
>>
>>
>> bryce at tahiti[~]>vmstat -i
>> interrupt                          total       rate
>> irq1: atkbd0                        9291          0
>> irq17: fwohci0                         1          0
>> cpu0: timer                     75416246       2000
>> irq256: em0                    137590284       3649
>> irq257: em0                    206367605       5473
>> irq260: em0                            1          0
>> irq266: ahci0                    9892384        262
>> cpu2: timer                     75415653       2000
>> cpu3: timer                     75415702       2000
>> cpu1: timer                     75415561       2000
>> Total                          655522728      17385
>>
>>
>> bryce at tahiti[~]>netstat -I em0 -h 1
>>            input          (em0)           output
>>   packets  errs idrops      bytes    packets  errs      bytes colls
>>      7.7K     0     0        11M       7.2K     0       475K     0
>>      8.1K     0     0        12M       7.4K     0       491K     0
>>      7.8K     0     0        11M       7.2K     0       476K     0
>>
>> bryce at tahiti[/usr/adm]>iostat 1
>>       tty            ada0             ada1             ada2             cpu
>> tin  tout  KB/t tps  MB/s   KB/t tps  MB/s   KB/t tps  MB/s  us ni sy in id
>>   0   108 22.35   3  0.07  20.61   3  0.07  58.60   0  0.00  71  0  4 17  7
>>   0   222 64.00   1  0.06  128.00   1  0.12   0.00   0  0.00  87  0  2 11  0
>
> First thing to try.  Turn off Legacy USB in the BIOS.
>
> Is this a 2 CPU machine with only one CPU installed?  Make sure your memory is all
> in the correct slots, on modern (non Front Side Bus) machines like Nehalem
> only the memory in the slots that are adjacent to a CPU are seen by the CPU.
>
> I gather you have a kernel with INVARIANTS, WITNESS and the like turned off, correct?
>
> Best,
> George
>
>