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NetBSD Focuses On Scalability

Posted by timothy on from the quick-rise dept.

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."

8 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Target by !the!bad!fish! · · Score: 2, Interesting
    What's interesting is that in only two weeks time the NetBSD team made dramatic improvements.

    Colour me cynical, but just maybe the improvements are targeted to produce a better benchmark rather than broader scalability.

    Tell me I'm wrong.

    --
    Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
  2. NetBSD is very cool by n1ywb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's some of the best source code I've ever looked at. As far as having consistantly good source code, it whoops Linux. I really tried to get my operating systems class teacher to use it instead of Linux, because of it's clean design. He decided to use QNX instead. WTF~?

    Anyway if you've never tried NetBSD, I think you should. At least get it installed and compile a kernel. It's a good learning experience. Plus it's been ported to every fsking hardware platform ever (just about.)

    --
    -73, de n1ywb
    www.n1ywb.com
    1. Re:NetBSD is very cool by kjs3 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I hate to compare NetBSD to Linux, because in many ways they are different tools for different jobs. Linux lives firmly in the big server and desktop world, where NetBSD live more comfortably in the more modest (hardware-wise) server and embedded world.

      That said, NetBSD is very clean and elegant, and is persistently and carefully maintained. If you want an operating system that you can sit down and really understand and modify, I think you'd be very, very happy with NetBSD.

      YMMV

  3. You should try plan9's by DrSkwid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The most beautiful code for the most beautiful OS.

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  4. What? by wowbagger · · Score: 3, Interesting
    mmap: a bad O(n) before, now O(1) with a small O(n) shadow.


    What the hell is this supposed to mean? Either you are O(1) or you are O(n) - what is "small O(n) shadow" mean?
    --
    www.eFax.com are spammers
  5. big doh notation by epine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The O(N) shadow statement is a sufficient statement of O(N) behaviour for the big O pedants. I looked at the graph, and I vote we keep the wording as it was.

    O notation is overrated. Sorting is always described as O(N*log N), but for any practical architecture using a radix sort with L1/L2 cache locality, replace log N with the constant factor of 3 or 4. A million cache local buckets can radix sort 10^30 elements in 3 log N time.

    Using all of main memory as your bucket store, I'd guess you could sort every proton in the known universe in 8 passes. So what exactly is that log N term trying to tell us?

  6. Felix von Leitner "papers" ... cum grane salis by Triumph+The+Insult+C · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can really only warn of using OpenBSD for scalable network servers.

    Don't use OpenBSD for network servers.

    ...again, I would advise against using OpenBSD for scalable network servers.

    If you are using OpenBSD, you should move away now.

    http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/11/02/secur e_dog_hosting_most_reliable_hosting_company_site_d uring_october.html

    --
    vodka, straight up, thank you!
  7. Great... running it on my VAX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...wake me up when I can take NetBSD v1.7 and run it on my VAXstation 3100 with 8MB of memory like I can with v1.5.1
    NetBSD is starting (not yet, but close) to become dangerously close to the precipice of being Bloatware(*)
    First on my list to replace is GCC which has ballooned in size way way too much for the "features" that have been recently included.

    TDz.
    (*Bloatware is a TM of Microsoft corp)