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From: Rick.Rashid@cs.cmu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach
Subject: Re: Mach 3.0 Performance
Message-ID: <EcNuqsG00hsQAZ_Jpf@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 25 Jun 91 20:55:20 GMT
References: <3102@fai.UUCP>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 44
In-Reply-To: <3102@fai.UUCP>

In looking at the numbers in Brian's paper I noted a couple of things:

    1) The single application which is listed as having the
       greatest disparity in time (150 vs 92 seconds) is the
       remote Andrew benchmark.  This is very deceptive because
       Mach 2.5 incorporates AFS 3.0 directly in the kernel
       (AFS is the remote file system being used) while there
       is no direct support for AFS in Mach 3.0.  In Mach 3.0
       we run a server program called Venus which implements
       an older version of the AFS interface.  This older
       implementation still talks to current AFS servers, but
       it does so using the old protocol through a protocol
       converter.  Performance of AFS access through Venus is
       thus particularly poor and not really indicative of any
       specific feature of Mach 3.0.  (The reason Mach 3.0 uses
       Venus has to do with NFS/AFS licensing issues.)

    2) The other tests indicated Mach 3.0 performance in the range of
       .73 to 1.64 of Mach 2.5 with the latex and linking applications,
       for example, running at .85 and the spelling checker at 1.64.

I don't routinely get number for the DecStation, but I do have some
older numbers for the Decstation Mach 3.0 vs. Ultrix (collected
last year for USENIX).  The numbers are presented as ratios
of Ultrix to Mach 3.0 times (i.e. numbers below 1 are
bad for 3.0, above 1 are good):

        Compilation benchmark:   1.23
        Andrew benchmark:         1.01
        Cached file reads:        1.60
        Uncached reads:            .90
        Uncached writes:           .88

For the Sun 3/60 I measured Mach 2.5 and Mach 3.0:

        Compilation:              1.04
        Andrew:                    .98

(additional numbers are in the paper).

I am currently compiling a set of performance number for the
i386 which I will pass on in a message in the next few days.

-Rick