NetBSD Focuses On Scalability

An anonymous reader writes "Felix von Leitner recently performed some benchmarks (previous story) for a talk about scalable network programming he held at Linux Kongress 2003. The winners in this scalability lineup were Linux and FreeBSD 5, followed by NetBSD and finally OpenBSD. What's interesting is that in only two weeks time the NetBSD team made dramatic improvements. Felix performed his benchmarks again and the results are nothing short of astonishing. NetBSD now has better scalability than FreeBSD." Read on for a list of improvements.

the submitter lists these changes:

• socket: previously O(n), now O(1).
  
• bind: greatly improved, but still O(n). Much less steep, though.
  
• fork: a modest O(n) for dynamically linked programs, O(1) for statically linked.
  
• mmap: a bad O(n) before, now O(1) with a small O(n) shadow.
  
• touch after mmap: a bad strange graph in 1.6.1, a modest O(n) a week ago, now O(1).
  
• http request latency: previously O(n), now O(1)

This is a very good job from the NetBSD team! I hope to see more benchmarks and more improvement for a great OS like NetBSD."

Comments

Re:Target

[pb]

um... the benchmarks in question all have to do with improving web server performance, (specifically, the author's pet project of a web server) so does it matter whether or not the goals *are* targeted to produce a better benchmark, if the *results* end up being broader scalability?

Benchmarks are great tools to use for improving performance, and as long as you don't have to cheat to do better, (like some major video card companies who shall remain nameless) improving your scores on a good benchmark largely equates to improving performance across a whole host of applications.

If you'll remember, the same thing happened with the Netcraft debacle; performance deficiencies in Linux wrt. NT were highlighted, and fixed, and Linux is the better for it, with even faster webserving, and a better TCP/IP stack. I don't care about the alleged reasons, I care about the positive results. :)

Not Bad for a Dying OS :-)

[Euphonious Coward]

The Debian Project is supporting a GNU-on-NetBSD-kernel configuration, Debian GNU/NetBSD. Benefits to users and to the Debian Project include:

• demonstrating Debian GNU kernel independence, enforcing package portability.
• supporting processor architectures that Linux is not ported to, yet, and many it will probably never be ported to.
• improving diversity: driver bugs on various peripherals are likely not to match, so one kernel might work with devices where the other fails.
• cool!

I run GNU on my machines. I'm not picky about kernels.

Re:Target

[Anonymous Coward]

The person who posted this should have read the damn article better! :) This wasn't done in two weeks: it is the difference in scalability between 1.6.1 and -current (the upcoming netbsd 2.0). So it's more like the works of several months, or even more than a year.

Re:Target

[overbom]

Yup, you're cynical.

NetBSD's team is scary good. There are some advantages to keeping a tight core development team, and if the team is good, one of them is quality.

In my experience with NetBSD, when they do something, they do it right.

Let me put it to you this way.

Say there was this huge alien spaceship coming from outer space to blow up the white house and use us as food. We'd need to send a rag-tag group of crazy operating system geniuses up into space in a rocket to intercept them and upload a virus into their system (this would no doubt piss off the stiff-necks in the military, but the orders would no doubt come from up top). That rag-tag group of crazy OS geniuses would be the NetBSD team.

Re:Target

[little_fluffy_clouds]

No, it was done in two weeks. *You* should read the article. Originally, he tested 1.6.1. He then went on to test -current. Two weeks later he was asked to test -current again after updating.