From owner-freebsd-performance@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Nov 29 14:20:56 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18E9116A4CE for ; Sat, 29 Nov 2003 14:20:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from qbic.eis.net.au (qbic.eis.net.au [210.8.248.21]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5A2A643F93 for ; Sat, 29 Nov 2003 14:20:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ernie@qbic.eis.net.au) Received: from qbic.eis.net.au (localhost.eis.net.au [127.0.0.1]) by qbic.eis.net.au (8.12.10/8.12.8) with ESMTP id hATMKpLM054885 for ; Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:20:51 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from ernie@qbic.eis.net.au) Received: (from ernie@localhost) by qbic.eis.net.au (8.12.10/8.12.8/Submit) id hATMKpgM054884 for freebsd-performance@freebsd.org; Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:20:51 +1000 (EST) From: User Ernie Message-Id: <200311292220.hATMKpgM054884@qbic.eis.net.au> To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:20:51 +1000 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL99b (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Subject: Performance of Folding@Home and Distributed Folding cleints X-BeenThere: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Performance/tuning List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 22:20:56 -0000 A question for the folks familiar with the Folding@Home protein folding project. I have been doing some performance testing of FreeBSD vs Linux in a couple of the Distrbuted Computing projects particulary Folding@Home and Distributed folding. The one that I am curios about is Folding@Home where their is no specific FreeBSD client, instead it runs as a Linux client using the linux_base-8 libraries from the ports collection. Under straight linux redhat, CRUX, gentoo it takes about 13hours on a P4C 3.0Ghz for complete a gromacs WU, the same hardware running either FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE or 5.1-RELEASE is takes about 26hours to do the same task. The only think I have noticed is that under Linux the client says it's using the SSE instructions, where under FreeBSD and the linux_base-8 libraries it does not say that. The cleint runs multi threaded under Linux or FreeBSD. I have also noticed quite a performance difference, though not as extreme, between the OS's in the distributed folding project where there is a native compile for FreeBSD. The benchmark suite says that FreeBSD is spending more time in sys (I/O) releated ativities than Linux but is still takes more hours to get through set of 250 generations than Linux does, the significant figure is the Foldtraj/ Usr time which seems to relate how long it will take to complete a generation. Linux Benchmark P4C 3.0Ghz Summary ------- Usr time Sys time -------- -------- Maketrj 2.670 0.710 Foldtraj 28.930 11.000 FreeBSD Benchmark P4 3.16GHz. Summary ------- Usr time Sys time -------- -------- Maketrj 5.789 0.234 Foldtraj 36.867 1.523 I am curious if there are any performace tweaks for FreeBSD, other than client settings or nice levels, to get more performance out of either Folding@home or Distribute Folding clients? I have asked this question on the respective forums, but the people there are generally not FreeBSD gurus. - Ernie.