WP Moar Speed

Project Goals

The goal of this project is to take various bare metal servers of different configurations and test them using our testing methodologies.

We also want to see what providers are using for hardware, specifically CPU, motherboards, memory and storage. So you’ll see a little bit of a deep dive into this.

Do CPU’s Matter to WordPress Workloads?

The CPU does matter to WordPress. When purchasing a server VPS or Baremetal, you could be receiving a CPU from 2015 or a CPU from 2021, both of which will perform differently.

Vultr for instance has multiple instance types with different processors from different years.

Vultr Plans and Processors – Managing WP

managingwp.io

A bunch of people got together including myself and looked at bare metal processors. We did some testing and WP Moar Speed was born.

Intel vs AMD does it matter?

Does WordPress care if you’re using an Intel or AMD CPU? Does it matter when using a VPS or Baremetal instance?

It’s important to know what processor is backing your WordPress workload, whether it’s a VPS or Baremetal instance.

An Intel CPU vs an AMD CPU from the same year, aren’t created equal. Both companies produce different server processors to match different workloads. There are two workloads that stand out, a multithreaded workload that requires a high core count lower frequency CPU and a single threaded workload that requires a low core count higher frequency CPU.

WordPress and PHP falls into the single threaded workload category.

What does High Frequency Mean? Does it Matter to WordPress Workloads?

When discussing CPUs, the term ‘high frequency’ refers to the CPU’s clock speed, which is measured in gigahertz (GHz). The clock speed indicates the number of cycles a CPU can execute per second, directly impacting its processing speed. A higher clock speed, means a higher frequency and in-turn means more tasks can be completed. Even as I’m writing this High Frequency is a strange term, but is commonly used as a buzz word versus high clock speed.

You must also understand that a 2.9GHz processor from 2015 won’t perform the same as a 2.9GHz processor from 2022. While clock speed is an important factor, it doesn’t solely determine how quickly a CPU will perform a task. Advances in architecture, efficiency, and additional features like cache size, core count, and instruction set improvements over time mean that a newer processor can be significantly faster and more capable even at the same clock speed.

CPU Instruction Sets? What are those?

There are several critical instruction sets within a processor that software can leverage to enhance efficiency in completing tasks. For example, MySQL and PHP may rely on specific processor instructions to execute tasks more quickly. If a processor lacks a particular instruction set, it may have to use alternative instructions, potentially slowing down the process.

For instance, when performing encryption tasks, think SSL encryption. Modern CPUs often utilize instruction sets like AES-NI (Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions) to accelerate encryption and decryption processes. If a processor lacks the AES-NI instruction set, it may need to use a less optimized method, which can significantly slow down the encryption operation. There might be other requests behind the encryption request waiting to be executed, and those will have to wait in queue.

So overall, processors matter 😉

Contributors

Here are the folks involved.

• Denny Cave
• Scott Thomason
• Eric Brockway
• Jordan Trask

Sponsors

Mightbox

LMT Solutions

We Power WP

Servers and Test Data

Here’s a Google Sheet of all the servers that we’ve tested.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tAP-mDUkdY_Pgm5A5RxS5VjhSY3goWagK7rNfL6lu1Q/

Airtables

VPS CPU Performance by Provider

The following Airtable is a list of bare metal CPUs with some basic benchmark information as well as associated providers that offer said CPU.

Bare Metal CPU Performance by Provider

The following Airtable is a list of bare metal CPUs with some basic benchmark information as well as associated providers that offer said CPU.

Articles