WimMark I report for 2.5.70-mm1

WimMark I report for 2.5.70-mm1

Runs (deadline): 717.27 1064.57 1089.13
Runs (anticipatory): 1342.93 1121.47 1330.42

WimMark I is a rough benchmark we have been running
here at Oracle against various kernels. Each run tests an OLTP workload on the Oracle database with somewhat restrictive memory conditions. This reduces in-memory buffering of data, allowing for more I/O. The I/O is read and sync write, random and seek-laden. The runs all do ramp-up work to populate caches and the like.
The benchmark is called "WimMark I" because it has no
official standing and is only a relative benchmark useful for comparing kernel changes. The benchmark is normalized an arbitrary kernel, which scores 1000.0. All other numbers are relative to this. A bigger number is a better number. All things being equal, a delta <50 is close to unimportant, and a delta < 20 is very identical.
This benchmark is sensitive to random system events. I run
three runs because of this. If two runs are nearly identical and the remaining run is way off, that run should probably be ignored (it is often a low number, signifying that something on the system impacted the benchmark).
The machine in question is a 4 way 700 MHz Xeon machine with 2GB
of RAM. CONFIG_HIGHMEM4GB is selected. The disk accessed for data is a 10K RPM U2W SCSI of similar vintage. The data files are living on an ext3 filesystem. Unless mentioned, all runs are
on this machine (variation in hardware would indeed change the benchmark).
WimMark I run results are archived at
http://oss.oracle.com/~jlbec/wimmark/wimmark_I.html

"Reader, suppose you were and idiot.  And suppose you were a member of
 Congress.  But I repeat myself."
	- Mark Twain

Joel Becker
Senior Member of Technical Staff
Oracle Corporation
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: (650) 506-8127

This is nuts. WimMark keeps on showing 2:1 swings in throughput when no other test shows any variation at all. I simply do not know what to make of it.

Your results would appear to indicate that the regression between 2.5.69-mm5 and 2.5.69-mm8 was actually due to something in Linus's tree, and it is now in 2.5.70.

I have an interdiff here between the linus.patch from mm5 and mm8 and it contains nothing very interesting.

It's at http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/wimmark-interdiff.txt

The actual diff is at
http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/wimmark-interdiff.patch.gz

There is the bio split stuff in ll_rw_blk.c, but that shouldn't matter.

Which device driver are you using?

sym53c8xx

"Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always
 remember, others may hate you.  Those who hate you don't win unless
 you hate them.  And then you destroy yourself."
	- Richard M. Nixon

Joel Becker
Senior Member of Technical Staff
Oracle Corporation
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: (650) 506-8127

It might be something from your tree that got into Linus' _after_ mm8?