[Mesa-users] Questions about mesa-docker

[Ian Foley]

Hi Evan,

Main question. What is the resource configuration in a Windows 11 pro
container that will give the best performance when running MESA? I think
the answer will depend on how the MESA software has been written to take
advantage of multi-core processors.



My experience, reflected by the tests below, shows that the resource
configuration can have a big impact on performance.



My configuration is a laptop running MESA in a container set up by Evan
Bauer on Windows 11 Pro


The 5 tests below raise questions about the best configuration



Run 1 – Laptop was using an i9 intel processor with 6 cores and 12 logical
processors and 16 GB RAM. Used Mesa version 21.12.1 with OMP_NUM_THREADS=6



Run 2-5 on a laptop using the intel ultra 9 185H processor with 32 GB RAM

Processor Specifications:

Total Cores 16

# of Performance-cores 6

# of Efficient-cores 8

# of Low Power Efficient-cores 2

Total Threads 22

Max Turbo Frequency 5.1 GHz

Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 Frequency 5.1 GHz

Performance-core Max Turbo Frequency 5.1 GHz

Efficient-core Max Turbo Frequency 3.8 GHz

Low Power Efficient-core Max Turbo Frequency 2.5 GHz



Performance tests were made running test suite 1M_pre_ms_to_wd.

I computed the times to run the 6 inlist’s in the test suite



Run 2. Set up container to use WSL2 as this was recommended by the
Docker Engine. I found it was quite difficult to configure the resources.
Roughly, the performance was twice as slow as that in Run 1 with the old
laptop. Really surprised as I expected a significant improvement with the
more powerful new laptop.



Run 3. Thought to setup container with Hyper-V. Found that it was easy to
configure the resoueces. Set it up with 22 threads, 15.7 GB RAM and 3GB of
swap space. Only did a partial run but found that the performance was about
the same as the old laptop. Again not the improvement I expected. I
wondered whether if I reduced the max number of threads it would be faster.



Run 4. Complete run with max of 12 threads. It ran twice as fast! Since my
new laptop has a processor with 6 performance cores, I wondered if setting
OMP_NUM_THREADS=6 will perform even better.



Run 5. Max of 6 threads.



inlists

Run 1

Run 2

Run 3

Run 4

Run 5

Mesa Version

21.12.1

24.3.1

24.3.1

24.3.1

24.3.1

Configuration

Hyper_V

Wsl2

Hyper_V

Hyper_V

Hyper_V

No of threads

6

22

22

12

6

Time unit

mins

mins

mins

mins

mins

Start

0.02

0.04

0.02

0.02

0.02

End h burn

5.67

14.48

About 5

3.92

6.19

End he burn

446.14

525.24



213.67

317.75

He core flash

117.33

70.09



34.93

47.47

End agb

29.36

19.35



10.72

14.52

To wd

11.34

13.24



4.77

6.36

Total time

609.86

642.44

?

268.03

392.31





Overall then using Hyper_V Manager seems to be 2 to 3 times faster than
wsl2.



Also, with the processor I have, around 12 threads was better than 22 or 6.
The reason for this is unclear and advice would be useful.

btw, I don't think the latest release has yet been added to mesa-docker.

Kind regards
Ian
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