On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 11:46:27PM -0400, Mike Lambert wrote:
> Perhaps I do need a slower machine. I'm not normally one for
> purchasing/developing on slower computers, however....it's much slower
> when I do that. :)
Very true in the general case, but the testing stage (and also any
benchmarking) would benefit from also being tried on a smaller machine.
(Note smaller, not just slower - ie less ram so it might swap more, smaller
CPU caches so it will show up if any algorithm has a large working set, etc)
> Currently, I'm using a 1ghz p4 as my testbed, with 512mb ram.
> Unfortunately, trying to copy/compile on a linux p2 350 would take longer,
> as would trying to test on other architectures. I've toyed with the idea
> of setting up dstributed benchmarking, where I can test smallish
> benchmarks on a bunch of testdrive machines at once, to run overnight in
> creating an 'ultimate single benchmark number' that means no more than any
> other benchmark. :)
Well, it would be more interesting as a comparative benchmark number, so
something like:
alpha arm i86 mips pa-risc ppc rs6000 sparc
without foo: 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
with foo1: 103 98 110 99 90 102 101 104
with foo2: 104 101 ...
so you could see the effect of something across various architectures.
Nicholas Clark
--
Even better than the real thing: http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/
