Dell Optimal BIOS Settings for HPC with Dell PowerEdge 12th Generation Servers Owner's Manual
Summary
This Dell technical whitepaper analyzes optimal BIOS settings for High Performance Computing workloads on 12th generation Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel Sandy Bridge-EP architecture. It covers processor settings, memory configurations, power management options, and virtualization features to maximize HPC performance. The target audience includes HPC system administrators, cluster architects, and performance engineers optimizing server configurations for computational workloads.
Page 1 Text Content
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers This Dell technical white paper analyses the various BIOS options available in Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers and provides recommendations for High Performance Computing workloads.
Garima Kochhar and Nishanth Dandapanthula
High Performance Computing Engineering
July 2012 | Version 1.0
Page Summary Contents For Dell Optimal BIOS Settings for HPC with Dell PowerEdge 12th Generation Servers Owner's Manual
Page 1
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers This Dell technical white paper analyses the various BIOS options available in Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers and pr...
Page 2
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers This document is for informational purposes only and may contain typographical errors and technical inaccuracies. The content...
Page 3
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Contents Executive summary .....................................................................................................
Page 4
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Figures Figure 1. Sandy Bridge-EP architecture for a Power Edge R620 ................................................ 8 Figur...
Page 5
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Executive summary The latest Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers provide several BIOS options that can be tuned for perfo...
Page 6
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers 1. Introduction Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers1 include the Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processors based on the Intel ...
Page 7
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers The following features are common to the servers: Support for processors from the Intel Xeon E5-2600 series. 4 memory cha...
Page 8
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Like Westmere-EP, Sandy Bridge is also a NUMA-based architecture. Figure 1 shows a block diagram of the Sandy Bridge-EP archi...
Page 9
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Table 2. Intel Sandy Bridge-based servers Architecture Processor Series Dell Power Edge Memory channels Max Memory Server mod...
Page 10
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Details of each of these settings are provided in [4]. A quick overview is provided here. Table 3. System Profile options 1. ...
Page 11
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers CPU Power Management determines what controls the power management for the processor. System DBPM (Demand Based Power Managem...
Page 12
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers The Performance Optimized System Profile focuses on pure performance. Turbo Boost is enabled; C States and C1E are disabled. ...
Page 13
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Figure 2. Local, remote and interleaved memory bandwidth Memory Bandwidth - Local, Remote and Interleaved ry id th in /s 26% ...
Page 14
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers C States, C1E, Monitor/Mwait – Disabled. This is to turn off all power saving features on the processor. System Profile –...
Page 15
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Table 5. Benchmark and application details Application Domain Version Benchmark data set High Performance Floating point CPU ...
Page 16
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers 5.1. Idle power Very few clusters tend to be fully utilized, i.e., running load at all times on all the servers. Most cluster...
Page 17
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers The next graph presents the impact of some BIOS options on idle power consumption. C States, C1E and Monitor/Mwait are option...
Page 18
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers used for the chart is the DAPC profile; all results are relative to DAPC. A bar higher than 1.00 indicates that the applicati...
Page 19
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers The Performance profile significantly improves MILC performance (21%), and energy efficiency is rg ff ic ie in it rb is le wi...
Page 20
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers energy efficiency of Turbo Boost disabled will be better than with Turbo Boost enabled. The text within the bar quantifies th...
Page 21
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Results are shown in Figure 7. The bar graph plots the performance of the application with Node rf rm it ic l P ro ss la ti f...
Page 22
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers The bar graphs plot the performance with Logical Processor enabled when compared to Logical Processor disabled. The 16-server...
Page 23
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Figure 9. Impact of C States and C1E on remote memory access Impact of C states/C1E on remote bandwidth te ry id th /s 8 Thre...
Page 24
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Table 6. 11th and 12th generation cluster test bed details Component 11th generation cluster10 12th generation cluster SERVER...
Page 25
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Figure 10. 11th vs. 12th generation cluster – idle power comparison 11th Generation vs 12th Generation - Idle power th rf rm ...
Page 26
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers shows the performance improvement with the new cluster relative to the previous generation. The secondary y-axis plots the en...
Page 27
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Table 7 summarizes the different options and the recommended settings for different configuration goals. Based on studies lik...
Page 28
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers 8. References 1. Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/campaigns/poweredge-12th-...
Page 29
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Appendix A – Summary of findings This section summarizes results from this white paper. For readability, The Performance Pe...
Page 30
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Turbo Boost 6) Turbo Boost disabled reduces application performance by up to 15% compared to Turbo Boost enabled. But, at the...
Page 31
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers Appendix B – Dell Deployment Toolkit to modify BIOS options from the command line The Dell Deployment Toolkit (DTK) is a comp...
Page 32
Optimal BIOS settings for HPC with Dell Power Edge 12th generation servers On Stack IQ Rocks+ Dell clusters, syscfg is installed in /opt/dell/toolkit/bin cd /opt/dell/toolkit/bin and run ./syscfg to s...
Manual Details
| Brand | Dell |
|---|---|
| Pages | 32 |
| File Size | 661.01 KB |
| Published | June 25, 2026 |
15 views
Enter the captcha to get the download link:
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I change BIOS settings from the command line?
Use syscfg, which is installed in /opt/dell/toolkit/bin on StackIQ Rocks+ Dell clusters. You run commands like ./syscfg --[Option]=<Value>.
What happens after changing BIOS settings using syscfg?
Any change to BIOS settings requires a system reboot for the change to take effect and for syscfg to report the new value.
Which options can be set using the command line?
You can modify System Profile, CPU Power, Memory Frequency, Turbo Boost, C States, C1E, Logical Processor, and Node Interleaving.
What is the optimal BIOS setting for general HPC use?
The recommended settings are detailed in Table 7. For basic performance considerations, you might adjust parameters like --SysProfile=PerfPerWattOptimized or configuring specific core options.