FreeBSD 8.0 Performance (at Phoronix)

[Alexander Motin]

David Naylor wrote:
> Phoronix recently published a comparative benchmark[1] for FreeBSD 7.2/8.0 
> against Linux and OpenSolaris.  I would like to bring some of the good and bad 
> to light (in the hopes that the developers with the correct expertise will be 
> intrigued).  
> 
> The tests were performed with a 'standard' installation of FreeBSD on a Lenovo 
> ThinkPad T61.  
> 
> I've tried to eliminate tests who's performance is a result of compiler 
> differences and/or 3rd party applications and tests who's statistical 
> significance are not so strong (subjective guess).  
> 
> Improvements for FreeBSD 8.0 vs 7.2:
>  - 7-Zip Compression (page 3)
>  - Timed MAFFT Alignment (page 5)
>  - GraphicsMagick (page 5)
>  - Threaded IO (64MB Random Write - 32 threads) (page 7)
>  - Threaded IO (64MB Read - 32 threads) (page 7)
> 
> Regressions for FreeBSD 8.0 vs 7.2:
>  - Gzip compressions of a 2GB file (page 3)
>  - C-Ray (page 4)
>  - Threaded IO (64MB Write - 4 threads) (page 7)
>  - Threaded IO (64MB Write - 32 threads) (page 7)
> 
> Poor performance relative to Linux and OpenSolaris
>  - Threaded IO (especially random writes) (page 7)
>  - OpenSSL (RSA 4096bit) (page 8)
>  - PostMark (disk transaction) (page 8)
> 
> It appears that threaded activity on UFS does not fair well against Linux/ext4 
> and OpenSolaris/ZFS.  Phoronix intends to do a comparative test against 
> FreeBSD and OpenSolaris on ZFS. 

Threaded I/O activity could get much benefit from NCQ-aware disk driver.
It is not included in default FreeBSD kernel, but it would be nice to
compare.

In power-consumption tests I believe FreeBSD could behave much better if
properly tuned. Unluckily our default installation doesn't use any
power-saving technologies. Six month ago I have shown on list how laptop
power consumption can be cut in half.

-- 
Alexander Motin