CPU2006 Flag Description
Dell Inc. PowerEdge R730 (Intel Xeon E5-2623 v4, 2.60 GHz)

Copyright © 2016 Intel Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Implicitly Included Flags

This section contains descriptions of flags that were included implicitly by other flags, but which do not have a permanent home at SPEC.

• • -O2
  • 

  • Enables optimizations for speed. This is the generally recommended optimization level. This option also enables:
    - Inlining of intrinsics
    - Intra-file interprocedural optimizations, which include:
    - inlining
    - constant propagation
    - forward substitution
    - routine attribute propagation
    - variable address-taken analysis
    - dead static function elimination
    - removal of unreferenced variables
    - The following capabilities for performance gain:
    - constant propagation
    - copy propagation
    - dead-code elimination
    - global register allocation
    - global instruction scheduling and control speculation
    - loop unrolling
    - optimized code selection
    - partial redundancy elimination
    - strength reduction/induction variable simplification
    - variable renaming
    - exception handling optimizations
    - tail recursions
    - peephole optimizations
    - structure assignment lowering and optimizations
    - dead store elimination
    

  • Includes:
    • -O1
      • -funroll-loops
      • -fno-builtin
      • -mno-ieee-fp
      • -fomit-framepointer
      • -ffunction-sections
      • -ftz
• • -O1
  • 

  • Enables optimizations for speed and disables some optimizations that increase code size and affect speed.
    To limit code size, this option:

    • Enables global optimization; this includes data-flow analysis, code motion, strength reduction and test replacement, split-lifetime analysis, and instruction scheduling.
    • Disables intrinsic recognition and intrinsics inlining.

    The O1 option may improve performance for applications with very large code size, many branches, and execution time not dominated by code within loops.

    -O1 sets the following options:
    -funroll-loops0, -fno-builtin, -mno-ieee-fp, -fomit-framepointer, -ffunction-sections, -ftz
  • Includes:
    • -funroll-loops
    • -fno-builtin
    • -mno-ieee-fp
    • -fomit-framepointer
    • -ffunction-sections
    • -ftz
• • -funroll-loops
  • 

  • Tells the compiler the maximum number of times to unroll loops. For example -funroll-loops0 would disable unrolling of loops.

• • -fno-builtin
  • 

  • -fno-builtin disables inline expansion for all intrinsic functions.

• • -mno-ieee-fp
  • 

  • This option trades off floating-point precision for speed by removing the restriction to conform to the IEEE standard.

• • -fomit-framepointer
  • 

  • EBP is used as a general-purpose register in optimizations.

• • -ffunction-sections
  • 

  • Places each function in its own COMDAT section.

• • -ftz
  • 

  • Flushes denormal results to zero.

Commands and Options Used to Submit Benchmark Runs

submit= MYMASK=`printf '0x%x' $((1<<$SPECCOPYNUM))`; /usr/bin/taskset $MYMASK $command

When running multiple copies of benchmarks, the SPEC config file feature submit is used to cause individual jobs to be bound to specific processors. This specific submit command, using taskset, is used for Linux64 systems without numactl.
Here is a brief guide to understanding the specific command which will be found in the config file:

• /usr/bin/taskset [options] [mask] [pid | command [arg] ... ]:
  taskset is used to set or retreive the CPU affinity of a running process given its PID or to launch a new COMMAND with a given CPU affinity. The CPU affinity is represented as a bitmask, with the lowest order bit corresponding to the first logical CPU and highest order bit corresponding to the last logical CPU. When the taskset returns, it is guaranteed that the given program has been scheduled to a specific, legal CPU, as defined by the mask setting.
• [mask]: The bitmask (in hexadecimal) corresponding to a specific SPECCOPYNUM. The specific example above, computes this mask value in the variable $MYMASK. The value of this mask for the first copy of a rate run will be 0x00000001, for the second copy of the rate will be 0x00000002 etc. Thus, the first copy of the rate run will have a CPU affinity of CPU0, the second copy will have the affinity CPU1 etc.
• $command: Program to be started, in this case, the benchmark instance to be started.

submit= numactl --localalloc --physcpubind=$SPECCOPYNUM $command

When running multiple copies of benchmarks, the SPEC config file feature submit is used to cause individual jobs to be bound to specific processors. This specific submit command is used for Linux64 systems with support for numactl.
Here is a brief guide to understanding the specific command which will be found in the config file:

• syntax: numactl [--interleave=nodes] [--preferred=node] [--physcpubind=cpus] [--cpunodebind=nodes] [--membind=nodes] [--localalloc] command args ...
• numactl runs processes with a specific NUMA scheduling or memory placement policy. The policy is set for a command and inherited by all of its children.
• "--localalloc" instructs numactl to keep a process memory on the local node while "-m" specifies which node(s) to place a process memory.
• "--physcpubind" specifies which core(s) to bind the process. In this case, copy 0 is bound to processor 0 etc.
• For full details on using numactl, please refer to your Linux documentation, 'man numactl'

Shell, Environment, and Other Software Settings

numactl --interleave=all "runspec command"

Launching a process with numactl --interleave=all sets the memory interleave policy so that memory will be allocated using round robin on nodes. When memory cannot be allocated on the current interleave target fall back to other nodes.

KMP_STACKSIZE

Specify stack size to be allocated for each thread.

KMP_AFFINITY

Syntax: KMP_AFFINITY=[<modifier>,...]<type>[,<permute>][,<offset>]
The value for the environment variable KMP_AFFINITY affects how the threads from an auto-parallelized program are scheduled across processors.
It applies to binaries built with -openmp and -parallel (Linux and Mac OS X) or /Qopenmp and /Qparallel (Windows).
modifier:
    granularity=fine Causes each OpenMP thread to be bound to a single thread context.
type:
    compact Specifying compact assigns the OpenMP thread <n>+1 to a free thread context as close as possible to the thread context where the <n> OpenMP thread was placed.
    scatter Specifying scatter distributes the threads as evenly as possible across the entire system.
permute: The permute specifier is an integer value controls which levels are most significant when sorting the machine topology map. A value for permute forces the mappings to make the specified number of most significant levels of the sort the least significant, and it inverts the order of significance.
offset: The offset specifier indicates the starting position for thread assignment.

Please see the Thread Affinity Interface article in the Intel Composer XE Documentation for more details.

Example: KMP_AFFINITY=granularity=fine,scatter
Specifying granularity=fine selects the finest granularity level and causes each OpenMP or auto-par thread to be bound to a single thread context.
This ensures that there is only one thread per core on cores supporting HyperThreading Technology
Specifying scatter distributes the threads as evenly as possible across the entire system.
Hence a combination of these two options, will spread the threads evenly across sockets, with one thread per physical core.

Example: KMP_AFFINITY=compact,1,0
Specifying compact will assign the n+1 thread to a free thread context as close as possible to thread n.
A default granularity=core is implied if no granularity is explicitly specified.
Specifying 1,0 sets permute and offset values of the thread assignment.
With a permute value of 1, thread n+1 is assigned to a consecutive core. With an offset of 0, the process's first thread 0 will be assigned to thread 0.
The same behavior is exhibited in a multisocket system.

OMP_NUM_THREADS

Sets the maximum number of threads to use for OpenMP* parallel regions if no other value is specified in the application. This environment variable applies to both -openmp and -parallel (Linux and Mac OS X) or /Qopenmp and /Qparallel (Windows). Example syntax on a Linux system with 8 cores: export OMP_NUM_THREADS=8

Set stack size to unlimited

The command "ulimit -s unlimited" is used to set the stack size limit to unlimited.

Free the file system page cache

The command "echo 1> /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches" is used to free up the filesystem page cache.

Red Hat Specific features

Transparent Huge Pages

On RedHat EL 6 and later, Transparent Hugepages increase the memory page size from 4 kilobytes to 2 megabytes. Transparent Hugepages provide significant performance advantages on systems with highly contended resources and large memory workloads. If memory utilization is too high or memory is badly fragmented which prevents hugepages being allocated, the kernel will assign smaller 4k pages instead.
Hugepages are used by default unless the /sys/kernel/mm/redhat_transparent_hugepage/enabled field is changed from its RedHat EL6 default of 'always'.

Firmware / BIOS / Microcode Settings

Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch:

This BIOS option allows the enabling/disabling of a processor mechanism to fetch the adjacent cache line within a 128-byte sector that contains the data needed due to a cache line miss. In some cases, setting this option to Disabled may improve performance. Users should only disable this option after performing application benchmarking to verify improved performance in their environment.

C States:

Allows the processor to enter lower power states when idle. When set to Enabled (OS controlled) or when set to Autonomous (if hardware control is supported), the processor can operate in all available Power States to save power, but may increase memory latency and frequency jitter.

C1E:

When set to Enabled, the processor is allowed to switch to minimum performance state when idle. Otherwise, the performance state is at maximum when idle.

Collaborative CPU Performance Control:

Enables/disables the joint OS-System CPU power management control feature.

CPU Performance:

If supported by the CPU, Hardware P States is a performance-per-watt option that relies solely on the CPU to dynamically control individual core frequency.

CPU Power Management:

This BIOS setting allows configuration of various demand-based switching schemes. Maximum Performance maintains full voltage to processor internal components, even during periods of inactivity, eliminating the performance penalty associated with the phase transitions between high and low load.

Data Reuse:

Enabling this BIOS option reduces the frequency of L3 cache updates from L1. This may improve performance by reducing the internal bandwidth consumed by constantly updating L1 cache lines in L3. Since this results in more fetches to main memory, setting this option to Disabled may improve performance in some cases. Users should only disable this option after performing application benchmarking to verify improved performance in their environment.

Energy Efficient Policy:

The CPU uses the setting to manipulate the internal behavior of the processor and determines whether to target higher performance or better power savings.
Options are Performance, Balanced Performance, Balanced Energy and Energy Efficient.

Energy Efficient Turbo:

EET is a mode of operation where a processor's core frequency is adjusted within the turbo range based on workload.

Execute disable:

This is a security feature designed to prevent certain types of buffer overflow attacks by enforcing specific areas of memory that applications can execute code. In general, it is best to leave this option Enabled for the security benefits, as no real performance advantage has been detected by disabling this feature in BIOS

Hardware Prefetcher:

This BIOS option allows the enabling/disabling of a processor mechanism to prefetch data into the cache according to a pattern-recognition algorithm In some cases, setting this option to Disabled may improve performance. Users should only disable this option after performing application benchmarking to verify improved performance in their environment.

High Bandwidth:

Enabling this option allows the chipset to defer memory transactions and process them out of order for optimal performance.

Logical Processor:

This BIOS setting enables/disables Intel's Hyper-Threading (HT) Technology. With HT Technology, the operating system can execute two threads in parallel within each processor core.

Memory Frequency:

This BIOS setting allows the memory to be clocked to the highest supported frequency.

Memory Patrol Scrub:

Memory Patrol Scrub Patrol Scrubbing is a custom System Profile option feature that scans the memory for bit errors and corrects them whenever possible. When set to Disabled, no patrol scrubbing will occur. When set to Standard Mode, the entire memory array will be scrubbed once in a 24 hour period. When set to Extended Mode, the entire memory array will be scrubbed every hour to further increase system reliability.

Memory Refresh Rate:

Selects the frequency at which the system memory controller performs the DRAM technology data refresh operation.

Monitor/Mwait:

Enables/disables use of the CPU opcodes defined to provide more efficient system software thread synchronization between multiple agents.

Node Interleaving:

This BIOS option allows the enabling/disabling of memory interleaving across CPU nodes. When disabled, each CPU chip can only access memory within its own node.

Snoop Mode:

Allows tuning of memory performances under different memory bandwidths. The optimal Snoop Mode setting is highly dependent on workload type.

Cluser on Die (COD) is best used for highly NUMA optmizied workloads. This setting offers the best case local memory latency, but worst case remote latency.
Oppportunistic Snoop Broadcast works well for workloads of mixed NUMA optimization. It offers good balance of latency and bandwidth.

System Profile:

This BIOS option sets the performance and power management aggressiveness for the system. It is a collection of selections including a custom selection designed to allow customers to choose the ideal operating profile for their server system environment. It includes settings like CPU Power Management, Memory Frequency, Turbo Boost, C1E and C States.

Turbo Boost:

Intel Turbo Boost Technology is a processor feature which allows the processor to transition to a higher frequency than the processor's rate speed if the processor has available power headroom and is within temperature specifications. Disabling this feature will reduce power usage but will reduce the system's maximum achievable performance under some workloads.

Uncore Frequency:

Selects the running frequency of the CPU internal uncore.
Dynamic mode allows the processor to optimizee power resources across the cores and uncore during runtime. The optimization of the uncore frequency to either save power or optimize performance is influenced by the setting of the Energy Efficiency Policy.

Virtualization technology:

When this option is set to ENABLED, the BIOS will enable processor Virtualization features and provide the virtualization support to the OS through the DMAR table. In general, only virtualized environments such as VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat KVM, and other virtualized operating systems will take advantage of these features. Disabling this feature is not known to significantly alter the performance or power characteristics of the system, so leaving this option Enabled is advised for most cases.

Flag description origin markings:

	Indicates that the flag description came from the user flags file.
	Indicates that the flag description came from the suite-wide flags file.
	Indicates that the flag description came from a per-benchmark flags file.

For questions about the meanings of these flags, please contact the tester.
For other inquiries, please contact webmaster@spec.org
Copyright 2006-2017 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
Tested with SPEC CPU2006 v1.2.
Report generated on Tue Mar 7 16:14:42 2017 by SPEC CPU2006 flags formatter v6906.