From owner-freebsd-performance@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Feb 23 16:25:36 2004 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 C8FA216A4CE; Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:25:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail-gate.ait.ac.th (mail-gate.ait.ac.th [202.183.214.47]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 89B9C43D1F; Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:25:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from alain@ait.ac.th) Received: from mailserv.ait.ac.th (mailserv.ait.ac.th [203.159.5.10]) by mail-gate.ait.ac.th (Postfix) with ESMTP id C1434FEB42; Tue, 24 Feb 2004 07:25:34 +0700 (ICT) Received: from localhost (mailserv [127.0.0.1]) by mailserv.ait.ac.th (Postfix) with ESMTP id A5ADC47; Tue, 24 Feb 2004 07:25:34 +0700 (ICT) Received: from mailserv.ait.ac.th ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mailserv.ait.ac.th [127.0.0.1:10024]) (amavisd-new) with ESMTP id 13319-03; Tue, 24 Feb 2004 07:25:34 +0700 (ICT) Received: from alain.itserv.ait.ac.th (obelix.itserv.ait.ac.th [203.159.28.4]) by mailserv.ait.ac.th (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E46F45; Tue, 24 Feb 2004 07:25:34 +0700 (ICT) Received: by alain.itserv.ait.ac.th (Postfix, from userid 10001) id EE2DA22E703; Tue, 24 Feb 2004 07:25:33 +0700 (ICT) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 07:25:33 +0700 From: Alain Fauconnet To: Oliver Lehmann Message-ID: <20040224002533.GA9677@ait.ac.th> References: <20040223192103.59ad7b69.lehmann@ans-netz.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040223192103.59ad7b69.lehmann@ans-netz.de> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new cc: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org cc: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Bad performance on alpha? (make buildworld) 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: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 00:25:36 -0000 On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 07:21:03PM +0100, Oliver Lehmann wrote: > Hi, > > I run several buildworld's on both, an Alpha EV56 and a Intel PII. I'm > wondering that the Pentium beats the Alpha. Both systems have INVARIANTS* > and WITNESS* disabled. Furthermore, no special tweakups - nearly "out of > the box" configured. > (rest deleted) Just a wild guess: I happen to have had the luck of counting one of the very few guys outside of the US involved in the development of the Alpha chip among my friends. I remember the long fascinating talks we were having when Alpha came out (touch of nostalgia here ;-) and him explaining to me how difficult it was to write a good compiler for the beast. The optimization pass is a real nightmare. At that time we were talking about the EV4 chip, I can only imagine that things have gone worse with the newer generation chips supporting more parallelism, deeper prefetch, branch prediction and all that. So I'm not overly surprised that a job made almost entirely of compiles takes a significant longer time, even though the CPU is more powerful. Now I'll let it to the really knowledgeable persons to give better reasons ;-) Greets, _Alain_