Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call

Benjamin LaHaise
2003-02-24T16:13:03Z

On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 07:47:25AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> If you were looking at the problem assuming that the same code had to
> run on uniprocessor and a 1000 way smp, right now, today, and designing
> for it, I doubt very much we'd have anything to argue about. A lot of
> what I'm saying starts to become obviously true as you increase the
> number of CPUs but engineers are always seduced into making it go 2x
> farther than it does today. Unfortunately, each of those 2x increases
> comes at some cost and they add up.

Good point. However, we are in a position to compare test results of
older linux kernels against newer, and to recompile code out of the
kernel for specific applications. I'm curious if there is a collection
of lmbench results of hand configured and compiled kernels vs the vendor
module based kernels across 2.0, 2.2, 2.4 and recent 2.5 on the same
uniprocessor and dual processor configuration. That would really give
us a better idea of how a properly tuned kernel vs what people actually
use for support reasons is costing us, and if we're winning or losing.

-ben
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