Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 11:04:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Eddie Lawhead <eddie@silk.net> To: Kent Stewart <kstewart@3-cities.com> Cc: drkhoe@gmsnet.com, Michael Slater <mikey@iexpress.net.au>, "'freebsd-questions@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Fact or Fiction (Unix vs NT) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9904151102120.10623-100000@localhost> In-Reply-To: <37161B6A.BCA9C1CA@3-cities.com>
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Take a look at this: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2242246,00.html On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Kent Stewart wrote: > > > "Dr. Mosh" wrote: > > > > >> > LOS GATOS, Calif., April 13. Today, Mindcraft released the results > > >> > of a study comparing the performance of Red Hat Linux 5.2 (updated > > >> > to the Linux 2.2.2 kernel) and Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 > > >> > operating systems. According to the report, Windows NT Server > > >> > provides over three and a half times the performance of Linux as a > > >> > Web server. Furthermore, the report shows that when testing Windows > > >> > NT Server and Linux as file servers, Windows NT Server provides over > > >> > two and a half times the performance of Linux. The full report, > > >> > including all of the details needed to reproduce the tests, is on > > >> > Mindcraft's Web site at: > > >> > > > >> > http://www.mindcraft.com/whitepapers/nts4rhlinux.html. > > >> > > > > > What I find interesting about this whole article is that it was "sponsored" > > by Microsoft, and if you look under their Apache configuration, > > MaxSpareServers = 290 > > > > That means it would fire up potentially 290 spare threads for each > > request, in effect throttling Linux's kernel... > > > > This puts their whole Linux/Unix know how in doubt, also, they claim Linux > > only used 960megs of the 4gigs of RAM, when a kernel recompile could've fixed > > the problem. I doubt if they understood the effective use of swap space > > either... > > > > The 960MB doesn't matter because they limited NT to using only 1024MB > and 64MB isn't a significant difference. The threads was an obvious > problem from the graphs when they went above a midrange number. > > I have done a lot of benchmarking on a Cray XM/P. You don't know what > the important knobs are until you try them all. On our Cray, for > example, 50% of the system throughput was dependant on write behind > disk caching. You have to provide the running program it's input data > and not force writing the output data to disk. The 20GB Cray DD40 disk > systems, at that time, were manufacturered using 16 CDC Hyrdra's, > which were stripped in groups of 4 to produce 20MB/sec continuous disk > I/O. Cray data channels were 1000MB/s and 100MB/s. At the time of the > benchmarks ~1988 a Hydra cost $250K US. Cray later replaced the 16 8" > full height drives with these little 5.25" half heights that cost on > the order of $1000 US while maintaining throughput. Maintanence on the > Hydra's was more than the new drives cost. You can imagine what the > little HD's looked like in the big 8" bay. You can also imagine the > drop in the amount of heat generated by the DD40. > > One of the reasons I'm using FreeBSD is because I was told by many > people that Linux is unstable under heavy loads and that FreeBSD > isn't. Whether that is true or not, it is what many Unix people > believe. My ISP went from Linux to BSDI and their system stability > went up a factor of 10 from my point of view. I was trying to come up > with a better solution for a friend that hires me occasionally to do > consulting. I thought FreeBSD would make an ideal platform for his > people where everyone could telnet in and schedule their jobs. He > doesn't have terminal server running on his version of NT. Many of the > problems run for a day or more. They have also been known to tell a > job to run all weekend. > > What I have found so far with my comparisons of FreeBSD and NT is that > my FORTRAN compiles are running on the order of 15:1. I have one > program (the most used one of course) consisting of 299 modules that > requires 1.25 hrs for a complete build on FreeBSD and 4-6 minutes with > DEC Visual Fortran on NT. FreeBSD is running on a P-166 with 96MB of > memory and my NT server has 2-133's with 128MB. The NT server is > really light on memory for this kind of activity. I haven't tried > building and running the sample problems on a single cpu P-II 400 > workstation where the server processes aren't getting in the way. It > also wouldn't be fair because I don't have a 400 that I am willing to > install FreeBSD on right now. The difference in build times that I am > seeing is consistent with make processes where the compiler's are > fired up for each module. The ratio can be much worse. The GNU f77 > compiler supplied with FreeBSD really isn't a compiler but a frontend > to f2c and gcc. Loading and unloading f2c and gcc consumes much time > and many resources. You may feed f77 a string of modules to process > but the way processing is done requires individual loads. Executions > speeds are not favorable either but a factor of two like I am seeing > is usually a bad optimization option. Since I am using defaults in > both cases, both compiler's likely have a faster combination. The > factor of two is about the same range as the Intel Pentium/iMac > benchmark comparison. Apple was making a big deal about the speed of > their iMac and the Intel Pentium. It turned out that Apple was > compiling the PC program for a 386, which was the default cpu, and > when PC Magazine used the 586 instruction set, the PC benchmark was > suddenly 4 times faster. The Intel machine went from half the speed of > the iMac to twice the speed. This also indicates that they were > probably much closer overall because each would have it's + and -'s > and benchmark differences have a tendancy to be smoothed out in the > real world. State changes on the Motorola cpu's have always been > better than Intel. > > Kent > > > -The Doc > > > > -- > > ------ drkhoe@gmsnet.com -------------- ++++++ ---------------------- > > ///// http://progmetal.gmsnet.com ----------------==== Unix systems - > > C/C++ video game engine development =><=============== Administration > > ===================== Intranet/Internet Engineering ================= > > -- > Kent Stewart > Richland, WA > > mailto:kstewart@3-cities.com > http://www.3-cities.com/~kstewart/index.html > > Hunting Archibald Stewart, b 1802 in Ballymena, Antrim Co., NIR > http://www.3-cities.com/~kstewart/genealogy/archibald_stewart.html > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Eddie H. Lawhead FreeBSD: The Power To Serve Kelowna, BC, Canada http://www.FreeBSD.org eddie@silk.net http://www.Silk.net =-=-=-=-=-=-= Enriched, V-Card, HTML Messages > /dev/null =-=-=-=-=-=-= To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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