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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!new-news.sprintlink.net!news.clark.net!news.clark.net!not-for-mail From: gsh@clark.net (Greg Hennessy) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Why to not buy Matrox Millennium Date: 5 Apr 1996 14:15:54 -0500 Organization: Clark Internet Services, Inc., Ellicott City, MD USA Lines: 48 Message-ID: <4k3rha$m9t@clark.net> References: <4jn4qp$6p@darkstar.my.lan> <4jve3t$cfe@hermes.synopsys.com> <4k0m0f$68j@hoopoe.psc.edu> <4k0r5l$g2@siberia.gtri.gatech.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: explorer.clark.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.apps:14232 comp.os.linux.development.system:20815 comp.os.linux.x:28755 comp.os.linux.hardware:35639 comp.os.linux.setup:49301 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:487 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3038 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2805 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:16787 >I have a couple of other questions, in addition to whether these results >were obtained on platforms of comparable "general" performance: basically >to know whether the performance was attributable to the system architecture >(i.e., did the processor have to swap bytes and restructure the packets?), >or the os (were there other x86 comparisons than FreeBSD vs. Linux). The paper benchmarked Solaris 2.4, FreeBsd 2.0.5R, and Linux 1.2.8. All were installed on the same 100Mhz Pentium with 32 meg ram, and two 2 gig disks, and a 3Com 3c509 ethernet card. The url of the paper is http://mosquitonet.stanford.edu/~laik/benchmarks/index.html. >Especially since the early tenor of this thread seemed to >suggest that Linux basic quality was at the "toy" level. Someone was engaged in a bit of Linux bashing, yes. >I'm hoping that more information will identify _why_ this results. The paper shows that Liux has a maximum UDP bandwidth of ~16 megbits per second. FreeBsd acheives 50 megbits/sec, while Solaris acheived 32megbits/sec. Note these are values from talking to the loopback device, NOT an acutal ethernet card. Under TCP Freebsd had 65 megbits/sec, Solaris 60megbits/sec, and Linux 25 megbits per sec. The percentage values that the earlier poster quoted are because Linux gets a much higher bandwith in a pipe. If you divide the actual throughput by the pipebandwidth, linxus fares worse than the other systems. But that is dividing an apple by an orange and comparing the result to a bananna. Quoting 14% udp bandwidth for linux is linux bashing off an inappropiate metric. The two regions where Linux came out behind FreeBSD are in the scheduler and in networking. Both of these areas are much improved in the linux 1.3.* kernels. The areas where FreeBSD came out behind Linux are in disk IO. Apparently the newest version of FreeBSD will have improvements there. An interesting article.