From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 24 21:09:35 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8757816A41C for ; Tue, 24 May 2005 21:09:35 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mkb@incubus.de) Received: from luzifer.incubus.de (incubus.de [80.237.207.83]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2194943D49 for ; Tue, 24 May 2005 21:09:35 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mkb@incubus.de) Received: from drjekyll.mkbuelow.net (p54AAEA60.dip.t-dialin.net [84.170.234.96]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by luzifer.incubus.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0CF2E2FFC4 for ; Tue, 24 May 2005 23:09:33 +0200 (CEST) Received: from [IPv6:::1] (localhost.mkbuelow.net [IPv6:::1]) by drjekyll.mkbuelow.net (8.13.3/8.13.3) with ESMTP id j4OLBPS4012000 for ; Tue, 24 May 2005 23:11:26 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from mkb@incubus.de) Message-ID: <4293987D.7090900@incubus.de> Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 23:11:25 +0200 From: Matthias Buelow User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (X11/20050509) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <20050524193117.GA35326@aristo> <20050524193707.GA11906@xor.obsecurity.org> <20050524201701.GB35326@aristo> <20050524202118.GB28257@xor.obsecurity.org> <20050524205609.GC35326@aristo> <42939667.6080503@incubus.de> In-Reply-To: <42939667.6080503@incubus.de> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.91.0.0 OpenPGP: id=6FF22C9F; url=http://www.mkbuelow.net/mkbkeys Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Performance of 4.x vs 5.x (nbench results) X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 21:09:35 -0000 > Well, that's hardly surprising.. short of minimizing the number of page > faults and avoiding TLB/cache shootdowns, what can the OS do to speed up > the CPU pipeline? The nbench program doesn't benchmark any OS functions > at all (except for loading time). Btw., what these programs aren't completely nonsense, what they are good for is stuff like finding out that the G5 processor in an 1.6ghz iMac has about 1/3 faster floating point performance than a 3ghz pentium-4 (but somewhat lower integer and memory performance). However, it doesn't show that for certain workloads the p4 I tested is much faster than the particular g5 iMac, since it's got double the amount of 2nd level cache (1mb vs. 512K). So the results are always very special and say very little about allround performance. (For example, for numerical stuff, the iMac would be the better choice, except if you have workloads which benefit significantly from a larger cache.) mkb.