Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 00:58:54 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> Cc: Nadav Eiron <nadav@cs.Technion.AC.IL>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org> Subject: Re: technical comparison Message-ID: <3B14A83E.C73D2499@mindspring.com> References: <200105232340.QAA07127@hokkshideh.jetcafe.org>
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Dave Hayes wrote: > You can't make that assumption just yet (although it seems > reasonable). We really don't know exactly what the problem they are > trying to solve is. Network news sites running old versions of > software (as an example, I know someone who still runs CNEWS) have > very clear reasons for phenomena resembling 60,000 files in one > directory. I think it's the "how can we come up with an artificial benchmark to prove the opinions we already have" problem... Right up there with the "Polygraph" web caching "benchmark", which intentionally stacks the deck to test cache replacement, and for whom the people who get the best benchmarks are those who "cheat back" and use random replacement instead of LRU or some other sane algorithm, since the test intentionally destroys locality of reference. People have made the same complaint about the lmbench micro benchmarks, which test things which aren't really meaningful any more (e.g. NULL system call overhead, when we have things like kqueue, etc.). I'm largely unimpressed with benchmarks written to beat a particular drum for political reasons, rather than as a tool for optimizing something that's meaningful to real world performance under actual load conditions. Call me crazy that way... -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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