libMicro opensourced

I've been busy with libMicro lately. LibMicro is a set of portable OS (kernel/library) benchmarks developed as part of the Solaris 10 performance effort. I've been working on a set of changes for a while to fix up some of the statistics and improve repeatability and prepare for open sourcing under the CDDL license.

There's still a lot to do on libMicro, starting with documentation on how to add new benchmarks, and how the whole thing works... but that will have to wait until I'm back from a brief vacation.

Posted at 10:12AM Aug 05, 2005 by barts in Performance  |  Comments[0]

Most common recent benchmarking mistake

Most frequently asked performance question of late: Why is this trivial piece of code slower on Solaris than on Linux with both OSes running on the same Opteron box?

Often this is because the default compilation mode using /usr/sfw/bin/gcc (or Studio, for that matter) on Solaris is always a portable binary - and 64 bit Solaris x86 isn't seen as a different architecture, since all the 32 bit programs still work just fine. So

gcc -o foo foo.c 

produces a 32 bit binary on Solaris amd64, and a 64 bit binary when compiled on a 64 bit Linux. No wonder there's a performance difference! To get 64 bit compilation using gcc, simply use the -m64 flag:

gcc -o foo foo.c -m64

When in doubt, specify what you want - you'll more likely get what you need.

Posted at 08:40PM Jun 15, 2005 by barts in Performance  |  Comments[3]