[Discuss-gnuradio] Recommended PC Hardware for Performance
This may be a somewhat banal question, but what would be the optimal hardware/software configuration needed to leverage the power of gnuradio? Core i7 versus Core2 Duo versus Other (maybe cell)? 64-bit Linux versus 32? Any hardware acceleration/DSP cards? Amount/type of RAM? While running some flow graphs on an older machine, I found that I had designed one of my low pass filters too tightly. The large number of taps in the FIR consumed all the processing power available, and starved the USRP for data. Is there a way to notify the user when a flow graph begins to fail or fails intermittently? Thanks! Tom ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Recommended PC Hardware for Performance
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 08:26:18AM -0400, Tom Lutz wrote: This may be a somewhat banal question, but what would be the optimal hardware/software configuration needed to leverage the power of gnuradio? Core i7 versus Core2 Duo versus Other (maybe cell)? Core i7 should have higher memory bandwidth. 64-bit Linux versus 32? 64-bit. Any hardware acceleration/DSP cards? No. Amount/type of RAM? 2GB+ While running some flow graphs on an older machine, I found that I had designed one of my low pass filters too tightly. The large number of taps in the FIR consumed all the processing power available, and starved the USRP for data. If you're not using gr.fft_fir_filter_*, you may want to try it. Is there a way to notify the user when a flow graph begins to fail or fails intermittently? You could periodically check the value of u.noverruns() Eric ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Recommended PC Hardware for Performance
Awesome! Thanks for the info. I don't think I'm using the fft filters, so I'll give that a shot. Tom On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Eric Blossom e...@comsec.com wrote: On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 08:26:18AM -0400, Tom Lutz wrote: This may be a somewhat banal question, but what would be the optimal hardware/software configuration needed to leverage the power of gnuradio? Core i7 versus Core2 Duo versus Other (maybe cell)? Core i7 should have higher memory bandwidth. 64-bit Linux versus 32? 64-bit. Any hardware acceleration/DSP cards? No. Amount/type of RAM? 2GB+ While running some flow graphs on an older machine, I found that I had designed one of my low pass filters too tightly. The large number of taps in the FIR consumed all the processing power available, and starved the USRP for data. If you're not using gr.fft_fir_filter_*, you may want to try it. Is there a way to notify the user when a flow graph begins to fail or fails intermittently? You could periodically check the value of u.noverruns() Eric ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Recommended PC Hardware for Performance
On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 08:26 -0400, Tom Lutz wrote: This may be a somewhat banal question, but what would be the optimal hardware/software configuration needed to leverage the power of gnuradio? Core i7 versus Core2 Duo versus Other (maybe cell)? gnuradio depends heavily on floating point performance and memory bandwidth. It makes good use of multiple cores. So if you can afford it use a quad-core processor with a high memory bandwidth. ( i7 quad or a quad core AMD phenom II ) 64-bit Linux versus 32? Definitively 64 bit. I haven't measured it recently but I have seen people report that going from 32 to 64 bit linux gave a very significant performance boost with gnuradio. Any hardware acceleration/DSP cards? Work is being done on a Cell and a GPGPU port (run processing on videocard) of gnuradio. I myself am working on the gpgpu port. At the moment this is done using CUDA which is a nvidia-only technology. As soon as OpenCL is available this will be rewritten in OpenCL. OpenCL is a cross-platform technology for doing massive parallel calculations on different hardware on different OSes (Windows, Linux, MacosX). Nvidia has a beta version for Nvidia cards for linux, windows. ATI is working on a version for their cards. There will be a IBM Cell version. The next release of MacosX will have support for it (And will also make use of it within the OS) When running on the videocard the memory bandwidth of the videocard is the main performance differentiator between cards. (The biggest bottleneck is the transfer of the data over the PCI-express bus and the call-overhead but this is about the same for all PCI-express videocards) Don't expect the GPGPU port to be production ready within the next year or two though. So unless you want to want to help with this port you don't have to be picky which videocard to choose. If you do want to help with the GPGPU port I would suggest a nvidia GTX 200 series card for best performance (Nvidia GTX 285 if you can affort the financial and power budget) I myself use a nvidia 9600 GT which is not that fast, but gives a good impression if rewriting gnuradio for running on the GPU will give a speed improvement on average machines. Amount/type of RAM? Fast, faster fastest. Amount is not that critical. 2 GB or more should do for most Gnuradio work on Linux. While running some flow graphs on an older machine, I found that I had designed one of my low pass filters too tightly. The large number of taps in the FIR consumed all the processing power available, and starved the USRP for data. This is exactly why I started the GPGPU port. You can sometimes have better results when you use the gr_fft filter in stead of the gr_fir filter. It depends on your decimation factor if this has better or worse performance. low decimation factor: use FFT high decimation factor: use FIR If in doubt: benchmark Is there a way to notify the user when a flow graph begins to fail or fails intermittently? I don't know any. Anybody else knows a trick for this? Greetings, Martin Thanks! Tom ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Recommended PC Hardware for Performance
Martin DvH wrote: On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 08:26 -0400, Tom Lutz wrote: gnuradio depends heavily on floating point performance and memory bandwidth. It makes good use of multiple cores. So if you can afford it use a quad-core processor with a high memory bandwidth. ( i7 quad or a quad core AMD phenom II ) I'm currently using a QX9770 overclocked to 3.6GHz, but with somewhat sluggish (for that processor) memory. I'm hoping to get a memory upgrade soon. I run *large* FFTs for SETI analysis, and that requires lots of memory, and increasing certain system parameters (SHMMAX). The Next Generation of my standard hardware platform will be a Core i7 920, overclocked as much as reasonable, with fast memory (6GB to 12GB). I'm doing multi radio astronomy and SETI analyses in parallel on data streams that may be arriving as fast as 16M samples per second. More CPU Igor, more CPU! Can't wait until Intel starts pushing hard on the new bus (QPI??), and brings out processors with more than 4 CPUs. -- Marcus Leech Principal Investigator, Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium http://www.sbrac.org ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
