Specifications

April 2012 v1 AMD Opteron™ 6200 Linux Tuning Guide
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1.0 Introduction
This guide provides configuration, optimization, and tuning information and recommendations for AMD Opteron™
6200 Series processors (formerly code-named “Interlagos” and built on AMD’s new core architecture) running
in a Linux environment. This guide is designed to help users through initial bios and system setup to ensure that
a base level of performance is achieved. Once a system is configured to this level, users can reference AMD’s
Software Optimization Guide for AMD Family 15h Processors to help further optimize workload performance.
1.1 Intended Audience
This document is intended for High Performance Computing (HPC) systems admins, application end-users,
and developers on a Linux platform who perform application development, code tuning, optimization, and initial
system installation, and base-level system checks. It also provides some basic troubleshooting information to
help with performance issues.
The information presented here assumes the reader has a basic understanding of the AMD Opteron™ 6200
Series processors. More information is located at: http://www.amd.com/us/products/server/processors/6000-
series-platform/6200/Pages/6200-series-processors.aspx.
For complete information on the AMD Opteron™ processor architecture and instruction set, see the multi-volume
AMD64 Architecture Programmer’s Manual available from http://www.amd.com. The following table provides
individual volumes and their order numbers.
Title Order Number
Volume 1: Application Programming
http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/24592_APM_v1.pdf
24592
Volume 2: System Programming
http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/24593_APM_v2.pdf
24593
Volume 3: General-Purpose and System Instructions
http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/24594_APM_v3.pdf
24594
Volume 4: 128-Bit and 256-Bit Media Instructions
http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/26568_APM_v4.pdf
26568
Volume 5: 64-Bit Media and x87 Floating-Point Instructions
http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/26569_APM_v5.pdf
26569
Volume 6: 128-Bit and 256-Bit XOP and FMA4 Instructions
http://support.amd.com/us/Embedded_TechDocs/43479.pdf
43479
1.2 AMD’s New Core Architecture Overview
The AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series processor uses AMD’s newly released core architecture. This architecture is
based on a building block called a module. Each module has two tightly coupled x86 processing engines that
are called cores. The architecture is based on a “share what makes sense” approach, with each core having
its own dedicated resources, such as integer scheduler, execution engine, and L1 cache and the two cores of
a module sharing some resources, such as instruction fetch, decode, Floating Point Unit, and L2 cache. Each
processor for the AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series is a Multi-Chip Module (MCM), meaning that it has two CPUs on
a die package.