CircleCI hardware: January 2023

I tried to find information about hardware used by CircleCI in Docker and Machine modes but failed to get any up to date information.

I'll focus only on largest resource classes available on Free / OSS plan. 

So I decided to use my own instances to get it. Docker Large.

Internally:

processor : 0

vendor_id : GenuineIntel

cpu family : 6

model : 85

model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8124M CPU @ 3.00GHz

stepping : 4

microcode : 0x2006c0a

cpu MHz : 2999.998

cache size : 25344 KB

physical id : 0

siblings : 36

core id : 0

cpu cores : 18

apicid : 0

initial apicid : 0

fpu : yes

fpu_exception : yes

cpuid level : 13

wp : yes

flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 hle avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid rtm mpx avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb avx512cd avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves ida arat pku ospke

bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs taa itlb_multihit mmio_stale_data retbleed

bogomips : 5999.99

clflush size : 64

cache_alignment : 64

address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

power management:

According to specs this runner allows you to use 4 CPU cores and 8G of memory.

I can clearly see that it can use all 4 CPU cores:

Physical machine is not very overloaded from my perspective but it's clearly busy:

 Let's talk about Machine executor "Linux Large" which is VM.

This one has same number of CPU cores but has more memory:

Considering same cost of Docker Large and Machine Large (20 credits) Machine option looks more attractive.

CPU:

processor : 0

vendor_id : GenuineIntel

cpu family : 6

model : 106

model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8375C CPU @ 2.90GHz

stepping : 6

microcode : 0xd000331

cpu MHz : 2899.970

cache size : 55296 KB

physical id : 0

siblings : 4

core id : 0

cpu cores : 2

apicid : 0

initial apicid : 0

fpu : yes

fpu_exception : yes

cpuid level : 27

wp : yes

flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp ibrs_enhanced fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap avx512ifma clflushopt clwb avx512cd sha_ni avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves wbnoinvd ida arat avx512vbmi pku ospke avx512_vbmi2 gfni vaes vpclmulqdq avx512_vnni avx512_bitalg tme avx512_vpopcntdq rdpid md_clear flush_l1d arch_capabilities

bugs : spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass swapgs mmio_stale_data eibrs_pbrsb

bogomips : 5799.94

clflush size : 64

cache_alignment : 64

address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

power management:

This machine is clearly 100% allocated only for us and I can see how my code uses all available CPU resources:

It's clearly AWS EC2 instance but we can try getting more information about instance type using metadata query:

curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/

Let's get instance type:

curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type

m6i.xlarge

And you can find information about it at AWS web site. 

Let's investigate ARM Large VMs.

It's clearly AWS too.

CPU information:

cat /proc/cpuinfo 

processor : 0

BogoMIPS : 243.75

Features : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 atomics fphp asimdhp cpuid asimdrdm lrcpc dcpop asimddp ssbs

CPU implementer : 0x41

CPU architecture: 8

CPU variant : 0x3

CPU part : 0xd0c

CPU revision : 1

lscpu:

Architecture:                    aarch64

CPU op-mode(s):                  32-bit, 64-bit

Byte Order:                      Little Endian

CPU(s):                          4

On-line CPU(s) list:             0-3

Thread(s) per core:              1

Core(s) per socket:              4

Socket(s):                       1

NUMA node(s):                    1

Vendor ID:                       ARM

Model:                           1

Model name:                      Neoverse-N1

Stepping:                        r3p1

BogoMIPS:                        243.75

L1d cache:                       256 KiB

L1i cache:                       256 KiB

L2 cache:                        4 MiB

L3 cache:                        32 MiB

NUMA node0 CPU(s):               0-3

Vulnerability Itlb multihit:     Not affected

Vulnerability L1tf:              Not affected

Vulnerability Mds:               Not affected

Vulnerability Meltdown:          Not affected

Vulnerability Mmio stale data:   Not affected

Vulnerability Retbleed:          Not affected

Vulnerability Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl

Vulnerability Spectre v1:        Mitigation; __user pointer sanitization

Vulnerability Spectre v2:        Mitigation; CSV2, BHB

Vulnerability Srbds:             Not affected

Vulnerability Tsx async abort:   Not affected

Flags:                           fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 atomics fphp asimdhp cpuid asimdrdm lrcpc dcpop asimddp ssbs

We can retrieve EC2 instance type using metadata query:

curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type

m6g.xlarge

It's AWS Graviton2 based instance and you can find more details here. 

For full review we can try GCE enabled VM type which can be requested using Android Machine images. 

CPU:

processor : 0

vendor_id : GenuineIntel

cpu family : 6

model : 63

model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU @ 2.30GHz

stepping : 0

microcode : 0xffffffff

cpu MHz : 2299.998

cache size : 46080 KB

physical id : 0

siblings : 4

core id : 0

cpu cores : 2

apicid : 0

initial apicid : 0

fpu : yes

fpu_exception : yes

cpuid level : 13

wp : yes

flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq vmx ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm invpcid_single pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid xsaveopt arat md_clear arch_capabilities

bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs

bogomips : 4599.99

clflush size : 64

cache_alignment : 64

address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

power management:

Then retrieve instance type using GCE metadata API:

curl "http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/machine-type" -H "Metadata-Flavor: Google"; echo -e "\n"

projects/1027915545528/machineTypes/n1-standard-4

It's n1-standard-4 and you can find official documentation about it here. 

Data as table:

• Machine Linux large: AWS EC2 m6i.xlarge
• Machine Linux large / Android image:  GCE n1-standard-4
• ARM Linux Large: AWS EC2 m6g.xlarge

I'll do performance comparisons between Docker and VMs in future posts.