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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!enews.sgi.com!sgigate.sgi.com!nntp.coast.net!netnews.worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.att.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!news From: "John S. Dyson" <dyson@inuxs.att.com> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: TCP latency Date: Tue, 09 Jul 1996 11:34:03 -0500 Organization: Lucent Technologies, Columbus, Ohio Lines: 59 Message-ID: <31E289FB.167EB0E7@inuxs.att.com> References: <4paedl$4bm@engnews2.eng.sun.com> <4pf7f9$bsf@white.twinsun.com> <4rql4p$39f@innocence.interface-business.de> <4rrimn$dro@fido.asd.sgi.com> <31E16DB5.41C67EA6@dyson.iquest.net> <4rtvpf$7e5@fido.asd.sgi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: dyson.inh.lucent.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.1-STABLE i386) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.networking:44538 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:3976 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:23158 Larry McVoy wrote: > > Usenix paper table for just FreeBSD vs Linux. The stuff that was "unfair" is > "Simple process" and "/bin/sh process". I'm not really sure it is reasonable > to call that "unfair". It's just a different library style. FreeBSD could > have done the same thing. The point of thebenchmark is to draw out these > differences. > Fairness is a term that is concocted by children. However, the benchmarks need to be done with all other things equal. For example, the benchmarks that were run A LONG time ago on an OLD, released version of FreeBSD are hard to compare with a development version of Linux. FreeBSD V2.1 is of the same timeframe as Linux 1.2.13. FreeBSD V2.2-current is of the same timeframe as Linux 2.0. FreeBSD V2.2-current is due for release in a few months -- the FreeBSD V2.1-stable (old code) has taken up alot of time, to support existing users who need the best stability... Since The FreeBSD V2.2 kernel is very stable right now, I would suggest comparing it to Linux V2.0 (which is also a kernel.) Generation wise: FreeBSD V2.2-current and Linux V2.0 are best to compare, while FreeBSD V2.1-stable and Linux V1.2.12 are good to compare. > L M B E N C H 1 . 0 S U M M A R Y > ------------------------------------ > > Processor, Processes - times in microseconds > -------------------------------------------- > Host OS Mhz Null Null Simple /bin/sh Mmap 2-proc 8-proc > Syscall Process Process Process lat ctxsw ctxsw > --------- ------------- ---- ------- ------- ------- ------- ---- ------ ------ > i586.1 FreeBSD 2.1-S 133 9 3K 12K 20K 105 24 28 > i586.120 Linux 1.3.28 120 2 1K 5K 16K 69 10 13 > i586.166 FreeBSD 2.2-c 166 500uses 1.2K 7K -- -- -- Of course, when you need fast perf, we don't suggest using shared libs, per the numbers above. Note that FreeBSD V2.2-current scales better than Linux 1.3.28 above? Of course my comparison is just as bogus as the two previous. I am just making a point that the benchmarks are only meaningful with critical interpretation. (BTW, my numbers are correct -- but are only accurate for the machine that I ran them on, under the conditions that I ran them under.) Considering the static shared libs for Linux of that generation, the DIFFERENT hardware used for the measurement, and the fact that some of the 2.0 enhancements had already gone into 1.3.28 and FreeBSD V2.1 is a *conservative* release, these numbers are only interesting to compare NEWER Linux with OLD FreeBSD on different hardware :-(. The shell thing is interesting also, because the lmbench benchmarks don't show a big (if any) difference between the FreeBSD shell and BASH when running on FreeBSD-current :-). In fact, I run with bash exclusively, because it doesn't hurt on FreeBSD at all anymore, when there is enough memory. FreeBSD-current handles large programs very efficiently, faulting them in approx 3X faster than Linux V2.0 (both reading and soft pagefaults.) I did not mean to create a red-herring about the shell. John