Threadripper 3990X: The Quest To Compile 1B Lines Of C++ On 64 Cores
Fun experiment.<p>The more pedestrian 5950X or the now bargain 3950X are great for anyone doing a lot of compiling. With the right motherboard they even have ECC RAM support. Game changer for workstations in the $1000–$2000 range.<p>The more expensive Threadripper parts really shine when memory bandwidth becomes a bottleneck. In my experience, compiling code hasn’t been very memory bandwidth limited. However, some of my simulation tools don’t benefit much going from 8 to 16 cores with regular Ryzen CPUs because they’re memory constrained. Threadripper has much higher memory bandwidth.