Home > Workload Solutions > High Performance Computing > White Papers > Dell Validated Design for Health Care and Life Sciences with Dell PowerEdge C6520 and XE8545 > BWA performance with selected Intel CPUs
As shown in Figure 3, a single sample runtime of BWA with a various number of cores is listed. Overall, BWA scales linearly up to 20 cores. However, the optimal number of cores to maximize throughput is 8 to 12 cores. Using more cores than this number drops down the efficiency of CPU usage. Although the runtime still decreases as more cores are added, the performance gain is marginal. CPU usage is better to process multiple samples with 8 to 12 cores, and it will increase throughput.
One interesting observation is that 6336Y performed exceptionally well to 24 cores, although it has the lowest TDP (w) among the tested CPUs. In Figure 4, the performances of BWA aligner are compared when the core assignments are tightly controlled; hence, core-to-core performance can be compared. CPU 6336Y performs better with the lower number of cores. This CPU could be the most economical choice of CPUs with the lower 185 TDP (W).