Re: CPU specific/optimized Debian builds ?
On Thu, 2002-05-30 at 09:44, starner@okstate.edu wrote:
> >Far from being a "deterministic" test, it's not a test of CPU at all.
> >The CPU will be mostly idle waiting for data from the hard disk and bus.
>
> Even run bzip? It's a CPU bound task; if it weren't then it would run at
> about the same speed as gzip and be usable many more places.
Yes, I have run bzip2, as you'd expect most people here would have.
What you are forgetting is that CPUs are incredibly fast - and cache,
the bus, ram and harddisks are many orders of magnitude slower (each
somewhat moreso than the last). The problem you run into here is that
to test the CPU (rather than the rest of the system) you have to have
such a small amount of data to compress that your sample is very
vulnerable to noise. On the other hand, if you try to take a larger
sample, other environmental factors come into effect - that of each
component the data must travel through before reaching the CPU.
It is CPU bound, but when it does rest and wait for data from the hard
disk, it is not the CPU that is being stressed. If it does this at all
it is not a good test of CPU optimisation.
James.
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