[gmx-users] some hardware questions

[Oliver Stueker]

Hi all,

This week Nvidia has also announced the GeForce GTX 690 with two
Kepler Chips [1].
That will make a total of 3072 CUDA cores @ 915MHz to 1019MHz and will
perform like two GTX 680s in SLI mode [2], but more energy efficient.

I'd really be interested if parallelization would be a bottleneck for
the Kepler chips compared to the Fermi ones. Has anyone already run
some benchmarks on Kepler?

Best,
Oliver


[1] http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/Releases/NVIDIA-Unveils-GeForce-GTX-690-Dual-Graphics-Card-Combines-World-s-Fastest-Gaming-Performance-With-Sleek-Sexy-Design-7c1.aspx

[2] http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/article-keynote/

On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 10:16 AM, Peter C. Lai <pcl at uab.edu> wrote:
> On 2012-05-02 06:13:04PM +0200, Mirco Wahab wrote:
>> Hello Peter,
>>
>> Am 02.05.2012 17:44, schrieb Peter C. Lai:
>>
>> > You can wait for ivy bridge, then stick some Kepler GPUs (nvidia gtx
>> > 680) in it. That should max the performance. asm is pretty much stagnant
>> > for general purpose procs since core2 came out.
>>
>> Is this true?
>>
>> To my knowledge, the Fermi GPU (GF-110, eg. GTX-580) is
>> a 16 processor (streaming multiprocessor, SM) system, each
>> processor having 32 cores running at 1.5 GHz, and the
>> Kepler-1 (GK-104, eg. GTX-680) an 8 processor system
>> with 192 cores per processor at 1GHz.
>> Because on the Fermi each SM has more L1 cache than
>> each SM on the Kepler-1 and because it might be harder
>> to saturate 192 cores in a compute-scenario, I'd expect
>> the 580 (GF-110) to be significant(?) faster in the
>> next Gromacs (4.6). Maybe somebody tested this already.
>>
>> (Here in Germany, I can by GTX-580/3GB for ~325€ + Tax.)
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> M.
>
> You might be. I do have a collaborator in France who chooses to use GTX 580
> with NAMD and is eschewing the Keplers. I think I saw a bench somewhere
> for Kepler compute; not sure if I saw that much difference (but you will
> be paying the price though). In that case stick with Fermis for now :)