Sparc has slow disk access
Hello,
I´ve got a Sparc E250 server and I´m runing Debian GNU/Linux on it.
I now started to make some performance comparisons against a default PC.
Here are the configurations I used:
E250:
~> cat /proc/cpuinfo
cpu : TI UltraSparc II (BlackBird)
fpu : UltraSparc II integrated FPU
promlib : Version 3 Revision 16
prom : 3.16.1
type : sun4u
ncpus probed : 2
ncpus active : 2
Cpu0Bogo : 799.53
Cpu1Bogo : 799.53
MMU Type : Spitfire
State:
CPU0: online
CPU1: online
2 GB RAM
4x36 GB SCSI
~> uname -a
Linux bse 2.2.18pre21 #1 SMP Tue Dec 19 22:53:19 CET 2000 sparc64 unknown
PC:
~> cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 8
model name : Pentium III (Coppermine)
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 795.576
cache size : 256 KB
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse
bogomips : 1589.24
256 MB RAM
20 GB IDE
With this setup I noticed that the PC is about two times faster in
inserting data into a postgresql database. I´ve got a hint to test
disk speed and I did so with the following script:
#!/bin/bash
date
ls -l /home/tillea/hd-test.file
i=0
while [ $i -lt 100 ] ; do
echo -n "$i "
let i="$i+1"
dd if=/home/tillea/hd-test.file of=/tmp/hd-test.file 2> /dev/null
done
ls -l /tmp/hd-test.file
date
### end of scrip
Here are the results:
PC:
$ uname -a
Linux wr-linux02 2.4.5 #1 Mit Mai 30 08:24:06 CEST 2001 i686 unknown
$ hd-test
Don Aug 23 12:21:56 CEST 2001
-rw-r--r-- 1 tillea admin 25600000 23. Aug 11:50 /home/tillea/hd-test.file
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 -rw-r--r-- 1 tillea admin 25600000 23. Aug 12:22 /tmp/hd-test.file
Don Aug 23 12:22:47 CEST 2001
----> 51s for the PC
Sparc:
$ uname -a
SunOS bse 5.8 Generic_108528-08 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-250
$ hd-test
Thu Aug 23 13:23:38 MEST 2001
-rw-r--r-- 1 tillea admin 25600000 Aug 23 13:13 /home/tillea/hd-test.file
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 -rw-r--r-- 1 tillea admin 25600000 Aug 23 13:26 /tmp/hd-test.file
Thu Aug 23 13:26:49 MEST 2001
-----> 191s for the Sparc running Solaris 8
$ uname -a
Linux bse 2.2.18pre21 #1 SMP Tue Dec 19 22:53:19 CET 2000 sparc64 unknown
Don Aug 23 13:55:37 CEST 2001
-rw-r--r-- 1 tillea admin 25600000 23. Aug 11:50 /home/tillea/hd-test.file
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 -rw-r--r-- 1 tillea admin 25600000 23. Aug 13:57 /tmp/hd-test.file
Don Aug 23 13:57:16 CEST 2001
-----> 99s for tge Sparc running Debian GNU/Linux
So the relation is about:
PC/linux : Sparc/Solaris : Sparc/Linux
1 : 3.7 : 1.9
That´s not good for the Sparc machine (and even worse for Solaris by the way
but this is of less interest because the machine should run under Linux).
Any hint if there some optimisations could be done?
Kind regards
Andreas.
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