Interesting analysis of linux kernel threading by IBM

[Peter Rival]

Alan Cox wrote:

> > Stupid question, but it's Saturday and I'm on a Windows system (don't ask...).
> > What do people think about something like SPECWeb99 - dynamic content, CGIs,
> > etc?  I know the biggest complaint about 96 is that it's completely static
> > content which a completely tweaked setup will keep completely in memory, among
> > other "optimisations" I've heard of.
>
> 99 is a lot better. Its worthless for real traffic studies because real traffic
> its lots of slow connections (which bizarrely enough tends to be harder
> than a small number of fast ones). specweb96 is a bit comical, its the
> bogomips of web benches, 99 tells you some truths about your cgi performance
> at least
>

Good - it sounds like we're at least getting somewhere.

>
> > something like the House web server when the Lewinsky paper was released.  It's
> > important for people to know that their system will continue to run and hopefully
> > well even when it's completely overrun.  Ideas?
>
> It depends on your server. Apache is really easy to degrade badly, thttpd
> performs materially better under extreme load. Do your tests with both apache
> and thttpd (www.acme.com)
>
> I think the comparison is probably the interesting part for showing how
> degradation is app dependant
>

That's easy enough I should think (he says, never having run 99).  My question now is,
if we should uncover something that appears to be a problem in the kernel, will people
listen if the testcase that found it was SPECweb99, or will we wind up down the same
rathole we've been down recently?  I'm hoping we can find something that people won't
say "eww - a benchmark, how stupid", point out its flaws, and then ignore whatever
merit it may have.  In other words, I don't want to waste everyone's time.

 - Pete


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