Re: 2.4 cpu usage...

Barry K. Nathan
2001-01-23T21:37:50Z

LA Walsh wrote:
[snip]
> So the kapm thing could be a "display" / accounting problem, but the
> slowdown in vmware/X was real. I ran a WIN Norton "Benchmark" -- comes
> up reliably over "300" -- usually around 320-350 under 2.2.17. Under
> 2.4, it came up reliably *under* 300 with typical being about 265".
>
> So...I'm bummed. I'm assuming a 30% degradation in an app is probably
> not expected behavior? Swap usage is '0' in both OS's (i.e. it's not
> a run out of memory issue).

I actually saw a similar type of slowdown on my Inspiron 5000e with 2.4
(test10preX or test11preX, where I forget what X was, probably 5 or so).

Specifically, the following command read off the disk more slowly:

gzip -1 < /dev/hda | nc some_other_box some_port -w 1

even when I got rid of the gzip -1 (redirecting /dev/hda straight into nc,
or piping cat into nc).

In my case, the slowdown was clearly visible - the disk light was at full
brightness under 2.2.16, but not 2.4.0testwhatever.

I wanted to try again without any APM stuff in the kernel (or at least,
not APM CPU idling) before reporting it, but I never got a chance to do
that.

-Barry K. Nathan <barryn@pobox.com>