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#1 2009-03-14 21:14:35

elmer_42
Member
From: /na/usa/ca
Registered: 2008-10-11
Posts: 427

Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

I was watching a favorite IPTV show of mine, and they had an interview about LinuxDNA. From what I understood, it allows you to optimize the kernel specifically for what you do, for example gaming. They claim to have a 200 FPS increase on Quake 3 once they optimized the system. Has anybody gotten LinuxDNA to work on Arch?


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#2 2009-03-14 21:58:51

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,544

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

A 200fps increase!?

No way in hell. LinuxDNA is a project to get the Linux kernel compiling with the proprietary Intel compiler set. The Intel compilers do ineed _usually_ generate better ASM than GCC, but it's almost always below 5%, and I'd doubt the benefit of an ICC-compiled kernel even more with games, especially if you're using a binary X driver. There's more problems with this, too. The latest kernel version LinuxDNA has working is 2.6.22, you have to go through a little more work to make ICC-compiled stuff do well on AMD (Google),etc.

If you want to try it (please benchmark for others!), you could probably make a PKGBUILD for it by modifying the kernel26 PKGBUILD, and then add exports to change CFLAGS, etc. There's a thread on these forums for compiling stuff with ICC via makepkg.conf, you would basically just set those settings inside the PKGBUILD if you don't want to compile everything with ICC (a good idea since a good amount of stuff breaks when compiled with ICC, and still other stuff has small-to-large speed losses, like x264).

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#3 2009-03-15 09:45:27

Dieter@be
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From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-11-05
Posts: 2,000
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Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

Well maybe they had a powerful system and very low graphics settings, so they could have gone from 2000fps to 2200fps wink


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#4 2009-03-15 20:14:34

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,544

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

Oh, durr, I read Quake 4 tongue

Yeah, maybe if it's an older game, since those are both more CPU-dependent and you may be getting a 200fps increase but it's probably still low %-wise.

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#5 2009-03-16 03:04:54

elmer_42
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From: /na/usa/ca
Registered: 2008-10-11
Posts: 427

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

If I run into a Pentium box any time soon, I'll definitely benchmark stock Arch VS LinuxDNA Arch, but for now I think I'm good with what I've got. Arch is fast enough by itself smile .


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#6 2009-03-16 08:45:39

Thaidog
Member
Registered: 2009-03-16
Posts: 6

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

elmer_42 wrote:

I was watching a favorite IPTV show of mine, and they had an interview about LinuxDNA. From what I understood, it allows you to optimize the kernel specifically for what you do, for example gaming. They claim to have a 200 FPS increase on Quake 3 once they optimized the system. Has anybody gotten LinuxDNA to work on Arch?

Hi, this is Tyler McAdams. I was the one interviewed about LinuxDNA on hak5.org. Please allow me to clarify.

The 200fps increase is NOT with an ICC compiled kernel. It is strictly with GCC. An ICC compiled system with both an ICC compiled kernel and ICC system code with IPO and PGO optimizations would probably increase the FPS about 20fps or so on top of 200fps.

When I say 200 fps per sec increase, I am referencing to over Vista Ultimate on the same hardware:

P4 EE 3.4ghz, 4Gigs PC3200, Supermico P4SCT mobo, nVidia Geforce 7950 GT 512MB, KillerNic gaming network card, and X-Fi Fatality gaming sound card.

The Linux system tested was a highly optimized Gentoo Linux system that was optimized to do one thing only: gaming. The idea is to have a special gaming system that you can dual boot in to a lan events... etc for hard-core gamers. You would not and could not use this system for anything other than gaming.

We have many uses for the kernel, gaming hpc, netbooks...etc All of these uses are specialized and furthermore optimized through PGO profiling for a specific purpose. That is how we can get extra performance that a generic Windows or even Linux install can not.

Quake 3 is a cpu intensive game that works well on Intel hardware. That is why I picked it to talk about. It shows what you can do by optimizing a system for gaming.

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#7 2009-03-16 11:29:22

Dheart
Member
From: Sofia, Bulgaria
Registered: 2006-10-26
Posts: 956

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

Can you post a link to that thread - this grabbed my attention... If I see real benefits, I might even start a spin off project for arch.
(Given that I'm in the age when I think I have to do something in order people to remember my name... Ain't I selfish?)


My victim you are meant to be
No, you cannot hide nor flee
You know what I'm looking for
Pleasure your torture, I will endure...

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#8 2009-03-16 11:55:49

Thaidog
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Registered: 2009-03-16
Posts: 6

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

Dheart wrote:

Can you post a link to that thread - this grabbed my attention... If I see real benefits, I might even start a spin off project for arch.
(Given that I'm in the age when I think I have to do something in order people to remember my name... Ain't I selfish?)

Are you talking about the interview? it's the flash movie on the frontpage: www.Hak5.org

Also: www.linuxdna.com

Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/linuxdna

Last edited by Thaidog (2009-03-16 12:03:16)

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#9 2009-03-16 13:35:12

Dheart
Member
From: Sofia, Bulgaria
Registered: 2006-10-26
Posts: 956

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

Somewhere on this forum someone said that the only noticeble difference with icc was that udev Uevents took 5 times less time... But the linuxdna project seam basicly normal gentoo system (-march=native) compiled with icc... Does it wield that much of a performance boost?


My victim you are meant to be
No, you cannot hide nor flee
You know what I'm looking for
Pleasure your torture, I will endure...

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#10 2009-03-16 22:33:43

Thaidog
Member
Registered: 2009-03-16
Posts: 6

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

Dheart wrote:

Somewhere on this forum someone said that the only noticeble difference with icc was that udev Uevents took 5 times less time... But the linuxdna project seam basicly normal gentoo system (-march=native) compiled with icc... Does it wield that much of a performance boost?

it varys depending on the type of system you are making but yes we see a big improvement... especially when we compile both the kernel an system packages with ICC. Not all system packages can be compiled with ICC though. Some are too entrenched in GCC semantics to compile correct with ICC.

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#11 2009-03-16 23:21:05

samushka
Member
Registered: 2008-10-13
Posts: 1

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

if someone could write a howto and pkgbuild i'd love to help test this out...

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#12 2009-03-16 23:51:37

elmer_42
Member
From: /na/usa/ca
Registered: 2008-10-11
Posts: 427

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

Thaidog wrote:

Hi, this is Tyler McAdams. I was the one interviewed about LinuxDNA on hak5.org. Please allow me to clarify. *clarification here*

Oh, I see. Thanks for clearing that up, the Hak.5 interview wasn't entirely clear. Keep up the good work, I hope I'll be able to try it out soon.


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#13 2009-03-17 01:06:09

Thaidog
Member
Registered: 2009-03-16
Posts: 6

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

elmer_42 wrote:
Thaidog wrote:

Hi, this is Tyler McAdams. I was the one interviewed about LinuxDNA on hak5.org. Please allow me to clarify. *clarification here*

Oh, I see. Thanks for clearing that up, the Hak.5 interview wasn't entirely clear. Keep up the good work, I hope I'll be able to try it out soon.

200fps does make people go bug eyed but it is possible on the specs listed above. Once we have a fully PGO enabled system with ICC installed I'll do some more benchmarks. I expect at least to see 20 more fps smile

We're getting about 500fps on Gentoo compared to about 288fps on vista / xp right now. (Q3 timedemo 1- no sound)

Last edited by Thaidog (2009-03-17 01:12:47)

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#14 2009-08-09 13:53:05

Tido
Member
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 65

Re: Has anybody tried LinuxDNA?

samushka wrote:

if someone could write a howto and pkgbuild i'd love to help test this out...

this++

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