PCIe Bench data

This repository contains the data from running the microbenchmark on a number of different systems. The directories follow the certain naming convention (see below).

There are also some scripts to visualise/plot the data using gnuplot. For Netronome NFP results, cd in the result directory and execute ../nfp-gen-plots.sh. This will use gnuplot templates in ./gnuplot-templates to generate a large number of plots. Note, not all data is plotted. Feel free to add additional templates/plots.

Some of the plots require a bw_calc.dat file to be present, containing the effective bandwidth for the PCIe configuration used when running the test. bw_calc.dat can be generated with pcie_bw.py.

Naming convention

The data from each test configuration is stored in a directory following this convention:

<card>_<Host CPU>_<Model>_[<Topology>][_<Misc>]

The major parts of the directory name are separated by _ while the minor sub-parts inside the major part are separated by -.

Host CPU naming conventions

The host CPU contains several sub-parts. First is the CPU architecture. For Intel CPUs we use the following abbreviations (tock is a major new micro-architecture, while tick typically denotes a process shrink):

• nb Netburst
• core Core (tock) and Penryn (tick)
• nhm Nehalem (tock) and Westmere (tick)
• snb Sandy Bridge (tock)
• ib Ivy Bridge (tick)
• hsw Haswell (tock)
• bdw Broadwell (tick)
• sl Skylake (tock)

The second portions contains the CPU model number as reported by /proc/cpuinfo.

Examples are: snb-Xeon-E5-2630 or hsw-Xeon-E5-2620v3

Computer model naming conventions

The computer model name should contain the name of the vendor and the model number of the machine. For example: dell-t620 of hp-z440.

Optional Topology naming conventions

The topology portion of the name should only be used for results from systems with multiple sockets. The topology is expressed in the format sX-sY-sZ, where X is the socket the PCIe device is plugged into, Y is the socket the memory got allocated from, and Z is the socket the control program, and therefore the cache thrashing/warming, was executed.

Miscellaneous naming conventions

The last section of the directory name should contain other significant information. Use, for example, iommu if the IO-MMU was enabled, iommu-nosp if the IO-MMU was used with Super Page support disabled. Other options would be gen2x4 if the device, which is natively a PCIe gen3 x8 device, is used in a PCIe gen2 x4 slot.