On Sunday, August 31, 2003, at 03:41 AM, John Andersen wrote:
On Saturday 30 August 2003 10:12, will wrote:
Here's a link to a lengthy benchmark using win xp. Takes a while to get to the good parts. A lot of explanation of the hw.
Hold on there, Will, we are talking LINUX here. Windows platforms top out at 1.4 times a single processor thru-put when running 2 cpus.
I understand the difference. I also noted in my reply that I was not aware of the performance increases with an optimized linux kernel and would be interested to learn more.
They don't start breaking even till you get 4 CPUs.
Even at maximum tweaking any win os still manages to leverage minimal gains from any system over other alternatives. Thus the longevity of the linux turnover in hardware deployment. Linux can do more with less. We all know this. http://pgmeter.sourceforge.net/pgmeter.pdf
Linux will get 2X the performance out of dual processors with almost no performance penalty for the SMP task management.
Even under the best tweaking and optimization I have not run across any processor that runs double. Apple has tried this for years while only being able to show a 1.5 or so increase in processing. Except in certain situations with extremely optimized programs. Which people like to use for advertising. "Gaussian blur runs x times faster on our machine with optimized x under photoshop." How many people use photo shop to check their email? or even know what a Gaussian blur is? It all just sounds good. http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-kperf/ http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/benchmarks/ 071803/main071803.html
There are some tasks, like Vmware, which can only utilize a single processor, but most other real world job mixes multi-thread all over the place.
The posted benchmarking was to mark the difference in the HT v. non HT processors. It also gave various comparison to other factors which I felt might help Ben or at least give him a direction for more research. His question was directly related to the average desktop user. Not which processor is better for displaying and calculating the mutation factors in the human genome when exposed to "x" type of catalyst under "y" conditions. The xp benchmarks just showed that ht usually results in a performance hit, though minor, and relatively few performance increased. I couldn't find anything that related to ht on linux, though, as you mentioned is basically using 2 lower powered procs to attempt to gain the same output as a faster proc while being cheaper in hardware deployment costs and HT is just attempting to gain this performance out of a single chips. The average email checking, web browsing, game playing user will almost never see an increase in performance from a dual proc or HT. That doesn't mean there aren't user that don't need them and can't take full advantage of them. Those same people use clusters and distributed processing also while making the big bucks. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify myself, will Ps. I don't mean to seem hostile. Just getting hungry.