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NetBSD 2.0 vs FreeBSD 5.3 Benchmarks

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the default-install-shootout dept.

diegocgteleline.es writes "According to OSnews, Gregory McGarry benchmarked NetBSD 2.0 against FreeBSD 5.3 and found that NetBSD 2.0 surpasses FreeBSD 5.3 in most of benchmarks. The machine used for benchmarks is a 3 Ghz P4 so it doesn't reflect the improvements of FreeBSD 5.3 in the SMP arena, which is where their developers have put their efforts in the last years and where NetBSD is still using a "big-lock" model. Newsforge is also carrying a interview with some NetBSD developers about the technology behind NetBSD 2.0."

4 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Benchmarks valid? by marcovje · · Score: 4, Interesting


    FreeBSD's focus is typically on overall throughput of massive server, with responsetime as a tradeoff, while this benchmark with all of its timings of single OS operations is more something realtimish?

    If NetBSD aspires to be a RT focussed distro/OS, they'd better have benchmarked it against some Linux with RT patches?

    1. Re:Benchmarks valid? by marcovje · · Score: 4, Interesting


      Correct. And this is how it went with 4.x either. 3.6 was significantly better than the first 4.xRC.

      It's not even something of FreeBSD in particular. In the project we are RC'ing for 2.0, and all kinds of detail benchmarks are popping up.

      However overall, for significant programs 2.0.x is generally faster than 1.0.x even when 2.0.x doesn't even use optimizations (the project is a compiler).

      The failure at microbenchmarks is just that the 1.0.x branch had 6 revisions in 3-4 years, some a full year tuning apart even.

  2. Re:Microbenchmarks... by Brandybuck · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hyperthreading is *NOT* SMP! It is a single CPU that can only do the work of a single CPU. It pretends to be two CPUs but it is not. If you were talking about multiple core CPUs, then you would be right, but p4 HTT processors are single core.

    Treating HTT at SMP is, to quote from the FreeBSD Handbook, "naive". Intel agrees, though they don't use that word. Here's a quote from the article you mentionL "but further performance gains can be realized by specifically tuning software for Hyper-Threading Technology." In other words, you tune software for HTT *differently* than you do for SMP.

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  3. Re:Microbenchmarks... by idiotnot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Except that FGL isn't supported still on a good amount of hardware. Things as ubiquitous as a at keyboard, and last time I checked, the realtek 8139 network device give you the nice [GIANT LOCKED] message in dmesg.

    If you have blessed hardware, you get better SMP support.

    I will say that FreeBSD 5.x is better than 4.x in some areas (background fsck, smp on supported hardware, better threading support), however, as a total system, it's really not finished, and shouldn't have been released in its current state. Maybe Matt Dillon was right -- I don't know. But what they've put out isn't up-to-par quality-wise, when you compare it to 4.x.

    NetBSD, on the other hand, really has come a long way with the 2.0 release. I would say that it's a better choice on i386 now than either FreeBSD 4 (which is deprecated, although there will be a 4.11 release), or FreeBSD 5. That they've gotten to that point is really a testiment to the amazing design work they do. It's a very good system that doesn't get enough attention.