Understanding Elastic Computing; Cores And Maximum Frequency - Oracle X4 series Administration Manual

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Understanding Elastic Computing

Elastic computing refers to the ability to maximize performance by selectively activating and

deactivating processor cores, which causes a subsequent increase or decrease in maximum

frequency of the remaining active cores. This allows you to set the optimal balance between

core count and maximum frequency for a given workload.

Each core supports one or two virtual processors, depending on whether hyperthreading is

enabled or not. Virtual processors support threads; increasing the number of active cores

increases the number of virtual processors, which allows the application to support more

threads.

Deactivating all of the virtual processors associated with a core deactivates the core.

Note -

Some workloads are not able to take advantage of having many threads, but instead benefit

from having fewer threads running at higher frequencies.

Before elastic computing, you had to order your server with a processor designed to have the

optimal core count and frequency for your specific workload. Elastic computing gives you the

ability to configure a single server dynamically to meet the needs of many types of workloads.

You can activate or deactivate cores using the Solaris or Oracle Linux OS, or the BIOS Setup

Utility.

Using the OS commands, you can activate and deactivate virtual processors while the

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application is running, causing the corresponding cores to become inactive. This is the

preferred method; however it requires that you have the Oracle Linux or Oracle Solaris

operating systems. Using this method you can adjust performance dynamically, as often as

necessary.

If you have any other supported operating system, you can activate or deactivate cores using

■

the BIOS Setup Utility. While you can change the settings whenever you wish, this method

requires rebooting the server.

Note -

processors associated with that core.

The following table shows the relationship between active cores and maximum frequency.

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Oracle X4 Series Servers Administration Guide • April 2016

For Linux operating systems, virtual processors are called logical processors.

If hyperthreading is enabled, to deactivate a core, you must deactivate both virtual

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