From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed May 30 0:58:40 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from smtp10.atl.mindspring.net (smtp10.atl.mindspring.net [207.69.200.246]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA78937B422 for ; Wed, 30 May 2001 00:58:37 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from mindspring.com (pool0246.cvx7-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net [209.178.164.246]) by smtp10.atl.mindspring.net (8.9.3/8.8.5) with ESMTP id DAA12733; Wed, 30 May 2001 03:58:28 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3B14A83E.C73D2499@mindspring.com> Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 00:58:54 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Reply-To: tlambert2@mindspring.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Dave Hayes Cc: Nadav Eiron , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, Jason Andresen Subject: Re: technical comparison References: <200105232340.QAA07127@hokkshideh.jetcafe.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Dave Hayes wrote: > You can't make that assumption just yet (although it seems > reasonable). We really don't know exactly what the problem they are > trying to solve is. Network news sites running old versions of > software (as an example, I know someone who still runs CNEWS) have > very clear reasons for phenomena resembling 60,000 files in one > directory. I think it's the "how can we come up with an artificial benchmark to prove the opinions we already have" problem... Right up there with the "Polygraph" web caching "benchmark", which intentionally stacks the deck to test cache replacement, and for whom the people who get the best benchmarks are those who "cheat back" and use random replacement instead of LRU or some other sane algorithm, since the test intentionally destroys locality of reference. People have made the same complaint about the lmbench micro benchmarks, which test things which aren't really meaningful any more (e.g. NULL system call overhead, when we have things like kqueue, etc.). I'm largely unimpressed with benchmarks written to beat a particular drum for political reasons, rather than as a tool for optimizing something that's meaningful to real world performance under actual load conditions. Call me crazy that way... -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message