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

Target

[!the!bad!fish!]

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.

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. :)

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.

NetBSD is very cool

[n1ywb]

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.)

Re:NetBSD is very cool

[kjs3]

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

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.

You should try plan9's

[DrSkwid]

The most beautiful code for the most beautiful OS.

Re:Nice

[someonehasmyname]

Actually, it's OpenBSD that doesn't support SMP. FreeBSD and NetBSD both support it rather well.

What?

[wowbagger]

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?

Re:What?

[booch]

RTFA - specifically the graph of the mmap benchmark in question. Note that for the most part the red line goes straight across. But there are a few data points that follow a O(n) graph above that (what the author called a shadow). So the interpretation is that the typical case is O(1), but occasionally it has a worst-case performance of O(n). Plus, the factor of the O(n) case is much lower than the previous version.

Re:What?

[platipusrc]

if you have any part of your operation that is O(n) you are O(n) - it's as simple as that.

Nope, you act like you know what you're talking about, but you're forgetting about a fun thing called amortization. For example, if you write a stack, and your push operation takes N operations on the Nth push (when you increase your array, and it can't be on the first push), then you can still end up with a constant push time even though not every push is constant.

big doh notation

[epine]

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?

Felix von Leitner "papers" ... cum grane salis

[Triumph The Insult C]

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

Re:Trying this out

[cpghost]

Benchmarks are dying

Great... running it on my VAX

[Anonymous Coward]

...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)