TPC-C benchmark used standard RH kernel

[Bond, Andrew]

I believe I need to clarify my earlier posting about kernel features that gave the benchmark a boost.  The kernel that we used in the benchmark was an unmodified Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 kernel.  We did tune the kernel via standard user space tuning, but the kernel was not patched.  HP, Red Hat, and Oracle have worked closely together to make sure that the features I mentioned were in the Advanced Server kernel "out of the box."

Could we have gotten better performance by patching the kernel?  Sure.  There are many new features in 2.5 that would enhance database performance.  However, the fairly strict support requirements of TPC benchmarking mean that we need to benchmark a kernel that a Linux distributor ships and can support.  
Modifications could also be taken to the extreme, and we could have built a screamer kernel that runs Oracle TPC-C's and nothing else.  However, that doesn't really tell us anything useful and doesn't help those customers thinking about running Linux.  The question also becomes "Who would provide customer support for that kernel?" 

Regards,
Andy