Exploring Performance and Energy Consumption Differences between Recent Intel Processors

Energy efficiency is a relevant research topic in High Performance Computing, strongly motivated by the increasing power consumption figures of modern compute devices. Recent processors introduce significant architectural differences compared to their predecessors and it can be challenging to use them efficiently, both in terms of performance and energy usage. In this work we conduct a performance and energy consumption assessment of 5 benchmarks in 3 dual-socket machines with Intel CPUs of different generations: 6-core Sandy Bridge, 18-core Broadwell and 20-core Skylake. We find that, on average, runtime improves by a factor of 2.1 with 1.1x less energy consumption on the Broadwell-based system and by a factor of 3.7 with 1.3x less energy consumption on the Skylake-based system compared to the Sandy Bridge-based system.