I have been torturing a couple of boxes and came up with these benchmark
results. I have also enclosed the script used to do the benchmark, and I
am well aware that this is a very specialized benchmark, testing only
limited parts of the kernel, and so on, BUT I am convinced that I'm seeing
something interesting things in the results anyway. :-)
There are numbers for two different machines, and each test has been run
five times in succession, with a sync and a sleep in between. The kernels
were optimized for Pentium Classic, and only contained IDE support (e.g.
no SCSI, networking, etc). The only processes running besides the
benchmark script were kernel daemons and getty:s. Both machines had
plenty of swap space available.
There are some numbers that I think are interesting:
1) Why does the hdbench numbers go down for 2.4 (only) when 32 MB is used?
I fail to see how that matters, especially for the '-T' test.
2) The 2.4 kernels outperform the 2.2 kernels for many clients (see
the "dbench 10" numbers). This matters a lot. Great!
3) The 2.2 kernels outperform the 2.4 kernels for few clients (see
especially the "dbench 1" numbers for the PII-128M. Oops!
The reason for doing the benchmarks in the first place is that my 32MB P90
at home really does perform noticeably worse with samba using 2.4 kernels
than using 2.2 kernels, and that bugs me. I have no hard numbers for that
machine (yet). If they will show anything extra, I will post them here.
Btw, has anyone else noticed samba slowdowns when going from 2.2 to 2.4?
Anyway, any help explaining/fixing points 1 and 3 would be highly
appreciated!
/Tobias
[All numbers in MB/s, bigger are better.]
======================================================================
133 MHz Pentium, DMA, 80M
2.2.16-22:
hdparm -T 37.43 37.43 37.32 37.32 37.43
hdparm -t 6.08 6.14 6.15 6.10 6.08
dbench 1 10.4302 10.0796 10.2559 10.2258 13.5464
dbench 5 7.97753 8.13792 7.66108 7.8526 7.44329
dbench 10 5.78309 5.58762 5.76388 5.54761 5.94415
2.2.18:
hdparm -T 37.87 37.87 37.65 37.54 37.65
hdparm -t 6.04 6.04 6.10 6.11 6.07
dbench 1 9.98084 9.19558 10.1023 9.78034 10.7593
dbench 5 7.5335 7.85761 7.90051 8.19119 7.78873
dbench 10 5.98423 5.99556 5.84676 6.02366 5.87104
2.2.19pre3:
hdparm -T 37.98 37.43 37.21 37.43 37.87
hdparm -t 6.08 6.08 6.06 6.11 6.09
dbench 1 10.2117 11.2996 12.017 11.3003 12.1677
dbench 5 6.51203 6.80555 6.46566 6.66772 6.56693
dbench 10 5.55781 5.68997 5.43493 5.58688 5.32528
2.4.0-prerelease:
hdparm -T 38.21 38.21 38.32 38.21 38.21
hdparm -t 6.07 6.24 6.14 6.30 6.26
dbench 1 4.23029 3.89185 10.27 14.2546 14.2719
dbench 5 8.63648 9.21302 11.0506 9.64396 10.8724
dbench 10 7.12402 6.92772 8.02011 7.65119 8.12557
======================================================================
133 MHz Pentium, DMA, 32M
2.2.16-22:
hdparm -T 37.10 37.76 37.98 37.54 37.32
hdparm -t 6.01 6.04 6.07 5.93 6.06
dbench 1 10.0048 8.59813 8.49598 9.59796 9.04642
dbench 5 3.99638 4.59673 4.08813 3.90389 4.30821
dbench 10 2.6141 2.69585 2.63201 2.59543 2.61565
2.2.18:
hdparm -T 37.21 37.98 37.98 37.98 37.76
hdparm -t 5.94 5.98 6.03 6.05 6.03
dbench 1 9.66983 10.3501 9.77682 9.44597 10.0551
dbench 5 5.32253 5.31517 5.9542 5.83028 5.22383
dbench 10 2.86753 2.85903 2.83746 2.93299 2.84175
2.2.19pre3:
hdparm -T 36.99 38.21 37.98 37.87 37.10
hdparm -t 6.08 6.15 6.14 6.14 6.14
dbench 1 8.64248 7.73716 7.42123 7.6462 9.58718
dbench 5 4.57973 4.5689 4.32196 4.50044 4.68734
dbench 10 2.56748 2.55824 2.56042 2.54797 2.59391
2.4.0-prerelease:
hdparm -T 37.32 37.21 37.32 37.32 37.21
hdparm -t 5.87 5.70 5.34 5.09 5.07
dbench 1 4.41358 7.43094 8.76442 8.64346 9.45806
dbench 5 4.42467 4.22284 4.89167 4.48322 5.08206
dbench 10 4.19795 5.6161 4.09045 4.09799 4.55435
======================================================================
400 MHz Mobile Pentium II, UDMA(33), mem=128M
2.2.18:
hdparm -T 82.05 82.05 82.05 82.05 82.05
hdparm -t 9.85 9.82 10.09 10.08 9.83
dbench 1 45.8926 48.1175 47.7244 47.7418 47.457
dbench 5 18.4021 20.7948 22.3345 20.4869 14.2627
dbench 10 13.1219 10.0275 10.8189 13.7482 9.51982
2.2.19pre3:
hdparm -T 81.53 82.05 82.05 82.05 82.05
hdparm -t 9.88 9.89 9.86 9.88 9.85
dbench 1 38.752 43.6587 43.1486 41.004 42.4516
dbench 5 26.6624 27.4806 26.1421 28.9142 24.6634
dbench 10 14.9424 14.6862 14.2302 14.6954 14.8282
2.4.0-prerelease:
hdparm -T 82.05 83.12 83.12 83.12 83.12
hdparm -t 10.08 10.08 10.08 10.08 10.09
dbench 1 29.6794 27.1372 27.3597 28.8273 28.9547
dbench 5 24.1114 38.7179 40.103 45.52 42.1053
dbench 10 22.8095 23.7791 22.8248 23.779 22.7847
2.4.0-prerelease + prerelease-diff(153405 bytes):
hdparm -T 82.58 83.66 83.66 83.66 83.66
hdparm -t 10.08 10.08 10.09 10.08 10.08
dbench 1 27.3103 24.7335 24.8461 24.9076 24.8722
dbench 5 16.1611 18.2355 23.6982 30.9935 31.9133
dbench 10 19.2254 24.7655 26.2663 19.8009 19.7665
======================================================================
400 MHz Mobile Pentium II, UDMA(33), mem=32M
2.2.18:
hdparm -T 82.58 84.77 82.05 79.50 82.05
hdparm -t 8.98 9.51 9.22 9.58 9.52
dbench 1 25.3272 25.6109 22.1329 18.9078 18.9356
dbench 5 7.763 7.41623 8.4115 7.65282 9.06259
dbench 10 3.02379 2.90191 2.9487 2.89583 3.08329
2.2.19pre3:
hdparm -T 82.05 84.77 82.05 80.00 82.05
hdparm -t 9.73 10.09 10.09 10.08 10.08
dbench 1 18.7016 16.0438 15.5598 14.9187 15.2902
dbench 5 7.14069 6.06751 6.51646 6.29517 6.20749
dbench 10 2.66164 2.64706 2.69115 2.64923 2.6574
2.4.0-prerelease:
hdparm -T 78.05 77.11 77.11 77.11 77.11
hdparm -t 9.41 8.67 8.48 8.29 9.12
dbench 1 4.9607 6.48172 6.62942 13.9923 15.4526
dbench 5 11.7028 14.0598 12.8747 10.9084 10.1008
dbench 10 6.03911 8.74155 11.0197 10.933 8.88914
2.4.0-prerelease + prerelease-diff(153405 bytes):
hdparm -T 78.05 77.11 77.11 77.11 77.11
hdparm -t 7.57 8.52 9.01 9.16 8.80
dbench 1 6.33322 14.6779 14.0875 16.5845 17.2773
dbench 5 7.0134 8.10417 7.76335 8.9227 11.3496
dbench 10 9.23498 9.09144 8.05864 7.87996 9.95048
Wow! You made it all the way down here. Congratulations! :-)
#!/bin/sh
LOG=/root/bench-`uname -r`.txt
DEV=/dev/hda3
echo "==========================================" 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
echo "Test begins..." 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
echo "==========================================" 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
echo "Running `uname` `uname -r`" 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
free 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
hdparm $DEV 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
echo "==========================================" 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
run() {
sync
sleep 10
echo "#################### Running $*" 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
eval $* 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
}
umount $DEV > /dev/null 2>&1
mke2fs $DEV 2>&1 2>&1 | tee -a $LOG
mount $DEV /export
cd /export
cp /root/dbench /root/client.txt .
run hdparm -T $DEV
run hdparm -T $DEV
run hdparm -T $DEV
run hdparm -T $DEV
run hdparm -T $DEV
run hdparm -t $DEV
run hdparm -t $DEV
run hdparm -t $DEV
run hdparm -t $DEV
run hdparm -t $DEV
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 1
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 1
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 1
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 1
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 1
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 5
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 5
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 5
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 5
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 5
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 10
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 10
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 10
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 10
rm -rf CLIENTS NBSIMULD ; run ./dbench 10
cd /
umount $DEV
