Benchmarking the computing resources at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

Abstract: The aim of this study is the characterization of the computing resources used by researchers at the "Instituto de Astrof\'isica de Canarias" (IAC). Since there is a huge demand of computing time and we use tools such as HTCondor to implement High Throughput Computing (HTC) across all available PCs, it is essential for us to assess in a quantitative way, using objective parameters, the performances of our computing nodes. In order to achieve that, we have run a set of benchmark tests on a number of different desktop and laptop PC models among those used in our institution. In particular, we run the "Polyhedron Fortran Benchmarks" suite, using three different compilers: GNU Fortran Compiler, Intel Fortran Compiler and the PGI Fortran Compiler; execution times are then normalized to the reference values published by Polyhedron. The same tests were run multiple times on a same PCs, and on 3 to 5 PCs of the same model (whenever possible) to check for repeatability and consistency of the results. We found that in general execution times, for a given PC model, are consistent within an uncertainty of about 10%, and show a gain in CPU speed of a factor of about 3 between the oldest PCs used at the IAC (7-8 years old) and the newest ones.