Workstation Performance - SPECworkstation 3.1

SFF PCs traditionally do not lend themselves to workstation duties. However, a recent trend towards miniaturized workstations has been observed. While systems in the GEEKOM AS 6's form-factor are still not capable enough to become workstations, the rapid performance improvements over the years has encouraged us to benchmark some of these UCFF / SFF systems for content creation workloads and professional applications. Towards this, we processed the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark from SPEC.

The SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark measures workstation performance based on a number of professional applications. It includes more than 140 tests based on 30 different workloads that exercise the CPU, graphics, I/O and memory hierarchy. These workloads fall into different categories.

• Media and Entertainment (3D animation, rendering)
• Product Development (CAD/CAM/CAE)
• Life Sciences (medical, molecular)
• Financial Services
• Energy (oil and gas)
• General Operations
• GPU Compute

Individual scores are generated for each test and a composite score for each category is calculated based on a reference machine (HP Z240 tower workstation using an Intel E3-1240 v5 CPU, an AMD Radeon Pro WX3100 GPU, 16GB of DDR4-2133, and a SanDisk 512GB SSD). Official benchmark results generated automatically by the benchmark itself are linked in the table below for the systems being compared.

Details of the tests in each category, as well as an overall comparison of the systems on a per-category basis are presented below.

Media and Entertainment

The Media and Entertainment category comprises of workloads from five distinct applications:

• The Blender workload measures system performance for content creation using the open-source Blender application. Tests include rendering of scenes of varying complexity using the OpenGL and ray-tracing renderers.
• The Handbrake workload uses the open-source Handbrake application to transcode a 4K H.264 file into a H.265 file at 4K and 2K resolutions using the CPU capabilities alone.
• The LuxRender workload benchmarks the LuxCore physically based renderer using LuxMark.
• The Maya workload uses the SPECviewperf 13 maya-05 viewset to replay traces generated using the Autodesk Maya 2017 application for 3D animation.
• The 3ds Max workload uses the SPECviewperf 13 3dsmax-06 viewset to replay traces generated by Autodesk's 3ds Max 2016 using the default Nitrous DX11 driver. The workload represents system usage for 3D modeling tasks.

This category sees the Raptor Lake-P and Rembrandt systems getting ordered on the basis of the configured sustained TDP. The 4X4 BOX-7735U enjoys a lead with its 42W TDP, and the 40W RPL-P systems (including the Arena Canyon NUC) follow behind. The GEEKOM AS 6 with its 35W setting is in the middle of the pack, ahead of the previous generation systems.

Product Development

The Product Development category comprises of eight distinct workloads:

• The Rodinia (CFD) workload benchmarks a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) algorithm.
• The WPCcfd workload benchmarks another CFD algorithm involving combustion and turbulence modeling.
• The CalculiX workload uses the Calculix finite-element analysis program to model a jet engine turbine's internal temperature.
• The Catia workload uses the catia-05 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces generated by Dassault Systemes' CATIA V6 R2012 3D CAD application.
• The Creo workload uses the creo-02 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces generated by PTC's Creo, a 3D CAD application.
• The NX workload uses the snx-03 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces generated by the Siemens PLM NX 8.0 CAD/CAM/CAE application.
• The Solidworks workload uses the sw-04 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces generated by Dassault Systemes' SolidWorks 2013 SP1 CAD/CAE application.
• The Showcase workload uses the showcase-02 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to replay traces from Autodesk???s Showcase 2013 3D visualization and presentation application

The trend observed in the Media and Entertainment category repeats here, with the 4X4 BOX-7735U faring better than the GEEKOM AS 6.

Life Sciences

The Life Sciences category comprises of four distinct test sets:

• The LAMMPS set comprises of five tests simulating different molecular properties using the LAMMPS molecular dynamics simulator.
• The NAMD set comprises of three tests simulating different molecular interactions.
• The Rodinia (Life Sciences) set comprises of four tests - the Heartwall medical imaging algorithm, the Lavamd algorithm for calculation of particle potential and relocation in a 3D space due to mutual forces, the Hotspot algorithm to estimate processor temperature with thermal simulations, and the SRAD anisotropic diffusion algorithm for denoising.
• The Medical workload uses the medical-02 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to determine system performance for the Tuvok rendering core in the ImageVis3D volume visualization program.

The addition of a GPU-centric component in the workload allows the GEEKOM AS 6 to leapfrog the RPL-P-based systems, but the 42W configuration of the Ryzen 7 7735U still remains on top.

Financial Services

The Financial Services workload set benchmarks the system for three popular algorithms used in the financial services industry - the Monte Carlo probability simulation for risk assessment and forecast modeling, the Black-Scholes pricing model, and the Binomial Options pricing model.

While the 42W configuration of the 4X4 BOX-7735U continues to remain on top, some of the components in this workload are also better served with high single-threaded performance. We see the Arena Canyon NUC slotting into the second place, with the GEEKOM AS 6 slipping to third, and the TDP ordering being maintained.

Energy

The Energy category comprises of workloads simulating various algorithms used in the oil and gas industry:

• The FFTW workload computes discrete Fourier transforms of large matrices.
• The Convolution workload computes the convolution of a random 100x100 filter on a 400 megapixel image.
• The SRMP workload processes the Surface-Related Multiples Prediction algorithm used in seismic data processing.
• The Kirchhoff Migration workload processes an algorithm to calculate the back propogation of a seismic wavefield.
• The Poisson workload takes advantage of the OpenMP multi-processing framework to solve the Poisson's equation.
• The Energy workload uses the energy-02 viewset from SPECviewperf 13 to determine system performance for the open-source OPendTec seismic visualization application.

This workload also includes a GPU-centric component, and that helps the GEEKOM AS 6 and the other high TDP Rembrandt system come out in the top two (with the difference being in the realm of run-to-run variations). The high-performance RPL-P system (NUC BOX-1360P/D5) also delivers very similar performance.

General Operations

In the General Options category, the focus is on workloads from widely used applications in the workstation market:

• The 7zip workload represents compression and decompression operations using the open-source 7zip file archiver program.
• The Python workload benchmarks math operations using the numpy and scipy libraries along with other Python features.
• The Octave workload performs math operations using the Octave programming language used in scientific computing.
• The Storage workload evaluates the performance of the underlying storage device using transaction traces from multiple workstation applications.

The components in this workload benefit from single-threaded performance as well as high-performance storage subsystems. The SSD used in the Arena Canyon NUC, NUC BOX-1360P/D5, and 4X4 BOX-7735U use SSDs with DRAM for the FTL, while the GEEKOM AS 6 came pre-configured with a DRAM-less SSD for cost optimization. As a result, there is a significant gulf in the scores of the other systems and the GEEKOM AS 6, with the latter making an entry in the bottom half of the pack.

GPU Compute

In the GPU Compute category, the focus is on workloads taking advantage of the GPU compute capabilities using either OpenCL or CUDA, as applicable:

• The LuxRender benchmark is the same as the one seen in the media and entertainment category.
• The Caffe benchmark measures the performance of the Caffe deep-learning framework.
• The Folding@Home benchmark measures the performance of the system for distributed computing workloads focused on tasks such as protein folding and drug design.

We only process the OpenCL variants of the benchmark, but the Intel iGPU drivers have an issue with the Caffe benchmark. All the Intel-based systems have a default 0.01 scoring for that component, and we see that reflected in their appearance in the bottom half of the graph below.

Within the Rembrandt-based systems, the 42W configuration of the Ryzen 7 7735U has the edge over the 35W Ryzen 9 6900HX in the GEEKOM AS 6, relegating it to the second place.

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