Linux-kernel mailing list archive 2000-32,: Re: maximum/optimal # of SMP CPUs between 2.2 and 2.4

# Re: maximum/optimal # of SMP CPUs between 2.2 and 2.4

Larry McVoy (lm@bitmover.com)
Wed, 9 Aug 2000 15:13:33 -0700

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Not to rain on anyone's parade, I've done my own testing of 2.4 and for
some networking stuff it is literally twice as good as 2.2, but I find
the statements below to be pretty misleading.

Aren't these quoted results from *static* web page tests? And didn't
Linux use khttp? If so, then unless NT is also using a kernel resident
server, comparing these is perhaps useful for marketing but is not useful
for engineering (and this is absolutely an engineering forum).

For us, in this forum, the point of benchmarks should be to expose where
there is room for improvement, ideally compared to a theoretical limit
(Linus' definition of "the best", one that I agree with), or compared to
some other platform. Looking at the results below, you'd think that Linux
screams. And it does, but on what I believe is an apples to oranges
comparison.

I'd be far more interested in seeing NT and Linux compared on something
which uses http to get a 20 little CGI scripts which do nothing but say
"I am script #18", and are implemented on both platforms as stand alone
perl programs.

I think Linux is likely to smoke NT on that, but I'd like to know that.
Any takers?

On Wed, Aug 09, 2000 at 02:55:58PM -0700, Dr. Kelsey Hudson wrote:
> > Management overview of Linux scalability at webserving:
> >
> > CPU Score Scaling
> > 1 1270 100%
> > 2 2200 86.6%
> > 4 4200 82.7%
> > 8 6387 62.9%
> >
> > Management overview of NT scalability at webserving:
> >
> > CPU Score Scaling
> > 1 732 100%
> > 4 1598 54.6%
> >
> > so it can be argued that Linux scales to 8 CPUs better than NT scales
> > to 4 CPUs. Have a look at the site yourself for all the `this is a
> > benchmark it is only a benchmark, share prices may go down as well as
> > up, may contain nuts' disclaimers, but the benchmarks were conducted on
> > identical hardware, as far as I can see.
>
> Actually, reading that it appears to me that Linux scales to 2 CPUs better
> than NT scales to 4... Compare 2200 to 1598...
>
>
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    Larry McVoy            	   lm@bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm

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