Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 21:52:07 +0000 From: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> To: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Benchmarks Message-ID: <19990414215207.A64591@rucus.ru.ac.za> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9904141517130.29587-100000@freebie.dp.ny.frb.org>; from Seth on Wed, Apr 14, 1999 at 03:21:36PM -0400 References: <XFMail.990414204955.asmodai@wxs.nl> <Pine.BSF.4.10.9904141517130.29587-100000@freebie.dp.ny.frb.org>
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Hi Most of this culled from an email I sent to a local list: > Just something that was posted to #freebsd yesterday. I think it's pretty > interesting for a couple reasons I'll mention below: > > What's hidden in here is that Microsoft sponsored this test (paid > Mindcraft to do it, I guess). The numbers may seem slightly high, but there are some reasons why NT on that machine might outperform Linux [and possibly FreeBSD] (running those sorts of services). NT's integrated SMB support in it's multiprocessor kernel versus Linux's [and again, FreeBSD's] userland daemon - there might not be much in that fight really. Backed up with nice RAID drives, NT is not (that?) slow for file serving. A previous ZDnet article (http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,387766,00.html/0,4153,387766,00.html), however, claims that with a VA Research-provided quad-xeon machine gave "performance [is] in line with Windows NT 4.0 on comparable hardware" in a PC Week lab test. I'm quite sure that Apache's performance knobs probably weren't turned, and probably not the Linux high-power knobs either. (as documented in the Apache manual) Also, I've seen cited before in similar tests that NT provides a really fast function (getfile?) that doesn't have an equivalent in our world. Don't take my word on that, though. It would be interesting to know what section the bottlenecks occurred in, in each test. > Something I found interesting. There was a post a while back that > suggested that Microsoft would not allow benchmarks of its own products to > be posted by 3rd parties. Did I misread this? If not, it seems mighty > unfair of them to post benchmarks only when it's in their interest to do > so. Of course it's unfair. And, of course, Microsoft must have known beforehand that they were likely to win. It's also good business sense - you don't want nitwits benchmarking machines that are poorly configured with your OS (which would probably be as poorly configured). It would not surprise me if Microsoft provided the hardware specs, aiming at the best difference between NT and Linux hardware, memory system, and multiprocessor support. The key may be in the hardware, as the PC Week test seems to indicate. I'll leave FreeBSD's likely performance to the experts. Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner nbm@rucus.ru.ac.za To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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