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Date:      Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:51:08 -0400
From:      Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
To:        Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>, Attilio Rao <attilio@freebsd.org>, arch@freebsd.org, Alfred Perlstein <alfred@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Fine grain select locking.
Message-ID:  <20070729175108.GA85196@rot26.obsecurity.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070704170522.GB53564@in-addr.com>
References:  <20070702230728.E552@10.0.0.1> <20070703181242.T552@10.0.0.1> <20070704105525.GU45894@elvis.mu.org> <20070704124833.W37059@fledge.watson.org> <3bbf2fe10707040800p4e003df0p65e2b802f81ec51e@mail.gmail.com> <20070704174511.C67251@fledge.watson.org> <20070704170522.GB53564@in-addr.com>

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On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 01:05:22PM -0400, Gary Palmer wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 05:46:34PM +0100, Robert Watson wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, 4 Jul 2007, Attilio Rao wrote:
> > 
> > >2007/7/4, Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org>:
> > >>There seem to be two parts of owning a benchmark:
> > >>
> > >>- Establishing baselines over time -- how doe FreeBSD 4.8, 5.5, 6.0, 6.1, 
> > >>6.2,
> > >>  6-STABLE weekly, 7-CURRENT weekly, and maybe a Linux or NetBSD version
> > >>  perform for the workload using otherwise identical configuration.
> > >>
> > >>- Measurement and feedback -- identifying bottlenecks, working with 
> > >>developers
> > >>  to measure the results of specific optimizations, etc, across the life 
> > >>cycle
> > >>  of the patch.
> > >
> > >Another problem here would be about the hardware availabilty (obviously 
> > >I'm speaking about scalability improvements). Until now, tests have been 
> > >done mainly on amd64 machines provided by Kris and Jeff, IIRC. Having a 
> > >wider range of targets would help a lot in these cases.
> > 
> > The FreeBSD Foundation is currently working on updating the Netperf test 
> > cluster from dual-cpu HTT boxes to 8-core systems, and from 1gbps to 10gbps 
> > ethernet.  Hopefully this will improve access to larger multicore systems 
> > for developers without local hardware.  This project has been "in progress" 
> > for a while now, but will wrap up soon.
> 
> Hi Robert,
> 
> Another way of looking at Attilio's message is that we need to focus on
> more than one type of platform.  In addition to benchmarking any differences
> between large 8 core Opteron and Xeon systems and the Sun "CoolThreads"
> platform, we need to maintain scalability on "more affordable" single
> core hardware as well.  An immediate thought is embedded type systems
> such as the Soekris. While high-end server farms have always been our
> bread and butter, I think widening our focus might be worthwhile.  I might
> have missed it, but I don't remember results being published to ensure
> that while SMP systems gain performance that we don't adversely impact
> UP systems in the process. (My memory is far from perfect, apologies if
> I'm wrong)

I do keep a close eye on UP performance on "my" benchmark targets, and
you will be pleased to know that the same optimizations that have such
a big effect on SMP systems often also have a positive effect on UP
systems, and do not regress performance in the other cases.

Kris



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