Align Photos Linux Performance 5X Worse Than Windows

[StefanM]

I'm making an attempt to switch to Linux on the machine that I run Metashape on. Things are working correctly, but it appears that the CPU is underutilized in Linux compared to windows.

The task I'm comparing on is aligning ~7500 photos. In Windows it takes ~3 hours, and in Linux it takes about ~15 hours.

Here's the machine:
Ryzen 9 5900X
64GB RAM
Radeon 6800XT

The version of windows being used is Windows 11, and the version of Ubuntu being used is 20.04 with kernel 5.15. In both cases I'm using Metashape 2.0.1.

The GPU driven parts of the workflow appear to be running at the same speed. I have a power meter on the computer, and during GPU driven parts of the align photos the max power is more or less the same between Linux and Windows, suggesting that the Radeon 6800XT is being utilized equally in Windows and Linux.

The CPU driven parts, especially the Estimating Camera Locations, are much much slower. The Ryzen 9 5900X is a 12 core 24 thread CPU, and I'm seeing in a system monitoring tool only 12 of the 24 threads in use during the Estimating Camera Locations, although I don't really know if this is an issue.

I suspect this is a CPU utilization related issue. During the Estimating Camera Locations part of the workflow in Windows I'm seeing the system use 185W of power, whereas in Linux I'm seeing it use 105W of power. At idle the system uses about 60W of power.

Using a CPU stress test tool in Linux I was able to get the system to draw 190W.

Is this an issue that is known and/or have a workaround?

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello Stefan,

Can you please provide the complete logs for Align Photos operation related to processing on Windows and Linux machines of the same dataset with the same parameters?

[StefanM]

I would be more than happy to, thanks in advance for taking a look at this issue. I used a smaller set of photos, specifically about ~1700 instead of ~7500. I also attached some screenshots of the CPU utilization in Windows and Linux.

[StefanM]

I ran the windows version in linux using wine and found the performance to be twice as fast as the linux version in linux. All 24 cores were utilized instead of just 12. However, it was three times as slow as the windows version in windows. At some point I will determine if this is an AMD Ryzen issue by trying an Intel CPU.

[James]

I was thinking of switching from Windows to Linux for my next PC, but this thread got me worried that Metashape might actually end up performing worse even on a more capable machine.

Is this an isolated case or known issue with Metashape on Linux?

Does anyone have any experience of it working just as well on Linux for CPU based tasks?