Hi all,
triggered by a discussion in irc.openprojects.net, #alphalinux, I've spend some
time
on benchmarking various linux kernels and came across some very strange results.
Platform: Dual 667 UP2000, 1.5gig ram, 3 adaptecs with 5 disks total, serial
console.
Kernel 2.4.4 seems to suffer a *tremendous* performance impact, compared to
2.2.19.
A 'time make -j4 boot' of the kernel-2.4.4 sources gives the following
compile-times:
2.4.4 2.2.19
real 3m58 2m38
user 4m23 2m23
sys 0m14 0m11
Several other tests seem to indicate a similar decrease in performance wrt
real-time, some
of them being CPU and/or memory-bound only.
In addition to that, i've noticed, that kernel 2.2.19 frequently crashes, after
giving the
well-known "stuck spinlock" messages in rather random processes. No panics are
given,
the system just freezes completely ( no ping and the like ).
So, obviously, my two questions are:
1. Has anybody ever observed the performance impact, i'm seeing with kernel
2.4.x ?
2. Since i moved to kernel 2.4.x very early for various reasons, I would like
to know, which
of the recent 2.2.x kernels can be considered stable on a alpha/SMP
platform ( ideally being
a UP2000 as well ).
I'm a bit confused here ;-)
Regards,
Thomas Weyergraf
--
Thomas Weyergraf [EMAIL
PROTECTED]
My Favorite IA64 Opcode-guess ( see arch/ia64/lib/memset.S )
"br.ret.spnt.few" - got back from getting beer, did not spend a lot.
