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From: martin@felix.UUCP (Martin McKendry)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.os.misc
Subject: Unix File System Performance
Message-ID: <7075@felix.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Sep-87 12:37:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: felix.7075
Posted: Thu Sep 10 12:37:43 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 18:35:31 EDT
Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: martin@felix.UUCP (Martin McKendry)
Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA
Lines: 31
Xref: mnetor comp.arch:2145 comp.os.misc:164

*

Given that there are many different disk formats and access
algorithms possible for a Unix file system, how do you decide
what improvements are best for a given system?  And having decided
how to invest your engineering dollars, how do you quantify
the improvements you have made?  Are there any standard tests
or benchmarks that can be run?  For example, what is the answer
to the question: "How much better is the 4.2 file system than
4.1?".  Note that "lots" is kind of a weak response.

Are there filesystem Dhrystones & Whetstones?  Of course, a single
application cannot give the whole picture -- you need to know how things
compare with multiple concurrent users beating on unrelated files.  None
of this "we can make our Unix faster than you can make yours".

Its also interesting to consider how you would compare the performance
of two file systems without factoring in CPU speeds, even though the
machine being compared use different CPU's at different speeds.
Maybe you would want to factor out channel speeds also. Even if 
you view the whole machine as indivisible, its non trivial.  A 
very high proportion of programs today are I/O bound -- a proportion 
that will increase as we get faster processors.  It seems to me that 
filesystem performance is the next big area for competition.  After 
all, that's what makes a mainframe a mainframe, right?

Comments?

--
Martin S. McKendry;    FileNet Corp;	{hplabs,trwrb}!felix!martin
Strictly my opinion; all of it