Linus Torvalds Adopts Ryzen Threadripper To Greatly Improve Compile Times

It’s not all too often that Linux and Git creator Linux Torvalds feels compelled to praise a new piece of hardware, but AMD has found itself on the receiving end of some love this week. In a Linux Kernel Mailing List email, Torvalds mentions that an upgrade to an AMD Ryzen Threadripper platform has dramatically improved his compile times:

In fact, the biggest excitement this week for me was just that I upgraded my main machine, and for the first time in about 15 years, my desktop isn’t Intel-based. No, I didn’t switch to ARM yet, but I’m now rocking an AMD Threadripper 3970x. My ‘allmodconfig’ test builds are now three times faster than they used to be, which doesn’t matter so much right now during the calming down period, but I will most definitely notice the upgrade during the next merge window.

We’re of course not surprised by Torvald’s findings, as we ran four different compile tests with the entire new Threadripper series, and even the 64-core 3990X manages to show some notable improvement over the rest of the lineup:

For most people who find themselves compiling software often, a CPU with many cores (and fast storage) can greatly improve overall compile times, and as we can see by the fact that the 64-core chip we tested does in fact separate itself from the rest, we can see that it’s a hugely scalable process.

Considering that AMD’s many-core processors really do shine in workloads like these, as well as many others under Linux, it’s a great sign for AMD to get a vote of confidence like this from someone critical about hardware.