Does HLDS support multicore processors CentOS 6?

Vita · **Author**

Hi,

Server specs:
Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 965 3.4 GHz
Ram: Kingston KHX 1600 MHz 8 GB
HDD: Hitachi 500 GB
Internet: 20/20 Mbps

I noticed that my processor is used about 50% sometimes, and I'm running only 17 servers total 338 slots, they are not full.

top command result:

Code:

top - 19:06:34 up 29 days, 12:51,  3 users,  load average: 0.06, 0.05, 0.05
Tasks: 217 total,   4 running, 213 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 28.0%us,  5.6%sy,  0.0%ni, 66.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.5%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   7994600k total,  7535688k used,   458912k free,    78552k buffers
Swap:  2046968k total,    23452k used,  2023516k free,  4797636k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
13204 srv100    20   0  138m 117m 8636 R 53.2  1.5 421:38.89 hlds_i686
11203 srv7800   20   0 1689m 843m 8184 S 17.9 10.8 756:46.35 hlds_i686
26200 srv8400   20   0  103m  82m 8556 S 12.3  1.1   8:11.49 hlds_i686
26534 srv8500   20   0 99.8m  77m 8280 R  9.0  1.0   0:16.84 hlds_i686
10117 srv7204   20   0  120m  84m 7048 S  7.0  1.1   1112:01 hlds_i686
 2291 srv7700   20   0 88956  70m 5140 S  6.3  0.9 497:20.80 hlds_i686
21971 srv8200   20   0  107m  86m 8576 S  6.3  1.1  80:28.24 hlds_i686
23995 srv8001   20   0 87304  71m 8092 S  6.3  0.9  39:21.83 hlds_i686
 5970 srv7400   20   0  105m  91m 7936 S  6.0  1.2 613:32.11 hlds_i686
31706 srv7200   20   0  307m 290m 5956 S  6.0  3.7   5086:50 hlds_i686
24609 srv8300   20   0 86480  70m 8088 S  5.3  0.9  29:24.44 hlds_i686
17121 srv8100   20   0 87064  71m 7924 R  5.0  0.9  74:49.06 hlds_i686
14137 srv7401   20   0  134m  88m 5320 S  4.7  1.1 622:50.77 hlds_i686
  158 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   4:17.37 kslowd001
    1 root      20   0 19248 1072  868 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.17 init
    2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd
    3 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.08 migration/0

Here is mpstat result:

Code:

07:11:16 PM  CPU    %usr   %nice    %sys %iowait    %irq   %soft  %steal  %guest   %idle
07:11:16 PM  all   14.37    0.00    2.96    0.05    0.00    0.18    0.00    0.00   82.43
07:11:16 PM    0   37.55    0.00    6.34    0.03    0.00    0.13    0.00    0.00   55.94
07:11:16 PM    1   12.45    0.00    2.74    0.04    0.00    0.52    0.00    0.00   84.24
07:11:16 PM    2    5.87    0.00    1.96    0.06    0.00    0.03    0.00    0.00   92.08
07:11:16 PM    3    2.54    0.00    0.94    0.06    0.00    0.01    0.00    0.00   96.45

As you may notice first core is used 37.55%, second 12%, and the other two are 5% and 2% used.

So my question is, does the CentOS 6 itself sets on which processor core are HLDS servers ran, or the HLDS is in charge of setting which core is used?
I'm curios about that, I did not do much research in this area of HLDS servers but maybe someone has, so It would be nice to give me an advice.

One more question, Is it better to use hlds_amd instead of hlds_i686 to run servers on AMD based hardware?

Best Regards!

fysiks · *Last edited by fysiks; 12-06-2011 at 18:31.*

HLDS is practically an ancient application and likely has no knowledge that your processor is even multicored.

Misery · 12-07-2011 , 01:31 Re: Does HLDS support multicore processors CentOS 6?

No.

You can optimize however... Compile your own kernel using kernel patches for real-time processing such as the RT patches, and raise process priority to FIFO with chrt -f.

Vita · *Last edited by Vita; 12-07-2011 at 18:36.*

I'm running multiple servers on this machine, and probably will run more in future, and I need CPU friendly kernel that will decrease my CPU usage and keep the FPS of servers around 500 FPS.
On http://wiki.fragaholics.de/index.php...l_Optimization that link it says that RealTime Kernel is not suitable for running multiple slots for HLDS or SRCDS servers, that I should try Zen Kernel, do you recommend a better alternative?

Best Regards!

Vita · 11-11-2012 , 19:53 Re: Does HLDS support multicore processors CentOS 6?

Anyone has some more info about kernels for high slot count?

Best Regards!

jonnzus · *Last edited by jonnzus; 11-12-2012 at 04:36.*

I'm pretty noob at this thigs but have you tried this?
taskset -c <1/2/3>

If I understood right that will bind your process to to one core..

I mean this point from link you gave.

Also usually on quad cores it can be better to run each server on a different core, like:

taskset -c 0 screen -AmdS cs-server ./hlds_run put your options here taskset -c 1 screen -AmdS cs-server ./hlds_run put your options here taskset -c 2 screen -AmdS cs-server ./hlds_run put your options here