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From: andrew@alice.att.com (Andrew Hume)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: reliable/reproduceable benchmarks on SGI MIPS box
Summary: clarification
Message-ID: <11743@alice.att.com>
Date: 25 Dec 90 03:39:36 GMT
References: <11737@alice.att.com> <9932@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ
Lines: 20

In article <9932@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>, tve@sprite.berkeley.edu (Thorsten von Eicken) writes:
~ ... quick 2 cents worth of guesses:
~ you haven't said whether you're running your program on all 8 processors
~ or on only one of them. if you're running on only one, could it be that
~ the other seven interfere? What happens if you run a "for(;;);" program
~ on seven processors while running the benchmark on the eighth?
~ also, is there a cache-flush system call you can call before starting the
~ timer?


	the program runs on just one cpu. the other processes are presumably
idle (or running some idle process). does cache-flush refer to file system?
if so, i don't see the need; my benchmark generates 200 bytes every run
(5 bytes/sec) and i'm sure one of the other 7 spare cpu's could handle
sending that one block off.

	still puzzled,
	andrew

p.s. how the hell do the specmark people do this stuff?