Re: LMbench as gcc performance regression test?

Dan Kegel
2003-08-31T15:39:11Z

Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 31, 2003 at 12:21:37AM -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
>
>>http://cs.nmu.edu/~benchmark/ has an interesting little graph
>>of LMBench results vs. Linux kernel version, all done with the
>>same compiler.
>>
>>Has anyone seen a similar graph showing LMBench results vs. gcc version,
>>all done with the same Linux kernel?
>>And does everyone agree that's a meaningful way to compare the
>>performance of code generated by different compilers?
>
> It's been a while since I looked at lmbench but: why do you think this
> would be useful? It's a system and kernel benchmark; I doubt
> optimization makes much difference at all.

I need to make sure that moving to a newer compiler for our kernel
will cause no performance regressions. Before bothering to bring up a
real-world networking application and measuring its performance
under the new compiler, it seems sensible to use a couple microbenchmarks
to verify that identifiable parts of the system have
not degraded in performance.

I myself am quite convinced I need to move to a newer compiler,
since I keep running into problems building various things with
old compilers, but my users are very conservative and skeptical;
I have to build a solid case for updating. Hence the insane amount
of time I spent figuring out and documenting how to build and test
the various versions of gcc and glibc (http://kegel.com/crosstool),
and then understanding the regression test failures.
- Dan

--
Dan Kegel