*BSD News Article 92632


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From: lm@neteng.engr.sgi.com (Larry McVoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Date: 2 Apr 1997 22:38:02 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38315 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6555 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29622

: >Sure they are.  The numbers don't represent any science.  The code that
: >generated the numbers, on the other hand, certainly does represent science.
: >While people have pointed out a few bugs in lmbench 1.1, the code has proven
: >to be quite accurate and robust.  Is that not science?

: Certainly.  And running a benchmark on two operating systems, one
: running on faster hardware, the other running on slower hardware, is
: not science.

It's not?  What about Spec, TPC, LADDIS, Netperf, etc.?  They do exactly
what you just claimed is not science.  So what's wrong with them?  Are you
saying that all benchmarks are valid only if they are run on identical 
hardware?  Makes it kind of hard to compare vendor A with vendor B,
doesn't it?
--
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Larry McVoy     lm@sgi.com     http://reality.sgi.com/lm     (415) 933-1804