Update: Bad kernel 2.4.x performance & 2.2.19 problems.

["T. Weyergraf" <kirk@colinet.de>]

Hi all,

recently, I have reported poor performance on UP2000/SMP ( Dual 667/2MB L2 ) of
the 2.4.4 kernel, compared to the 2.2.19. In addition, 2.2.19 crashed due to the fact,
that CONFIG_RTC is broken wrt SMP/Alpha. In the meantime, I've run a few more tests.

1. 2.2.19 runs great with CONFIG_RTC, if the rtc-lightweight patch is applied, which has
    been sent to me from a very nice SuSE person ( no flames please ;-)

2. getrusage ( which was my suspect of reporting false numbers on unpatched 2.2.19 )
    is correct, although the numbers it generates seem wrong wrt the broken CONFIG_RTC.
    With the rtc-leightweight patch applied, the numbers are correct AND in the 2.4.4 ballpark,
    when it comes to CPU-bound tasks.

3. 2.4.4 porforms similar to 2.2.19, except on medium to heavy disk-oriented benchmarks.
    On the latter, 2.4.4 is dramatically slower, which can be accounted to the new Adaptec
    aic7xxx driver, which I've used. Thus kernel-builds and stuff alike run slower.
    ( Note, that my UP2000 uses three adaptec controllers ).

This is just to let you know ;-)

Regards,
Thomas Weyergraf



-- 
Thomas Weyergraf                                                kirk@colinet.de
My Favorite IA64 Opcode-guess ( see arch/ia64/lib/memset.S )
"br.ret.spnt.few" - got back from getting beer, did not spend a lot.