Kernbench v0.30


What is this?

This is a cpu throughput benchmark originally devised and used by Martin J.
Bligh. It is designed to compare kernels on the same machine, or to compare
hardware. To compare hardware you need to be running the same architecture
machines (eg i386) and run kernbench on the same kernel source tree.

It runs a kernel at various numbers of concurrent jobs: 1/2 number of cpus, 
optimal (default is 4xnumber of cpus) and maximal job count. Optionally it can
also run single threaded. It then prints out a number of useful statistics
for the average of each group of runs.

You need at least 2Gb of ram for this to be a true throughput benchmark or 
else you will get swapstorms.

Ideally it should be run in single user mode on a non-journalled filesystem.
To compare results it should always be run in the same kernel tree.


How do I use it?

You need a kernel tree (any will do) and the applications 'time' and 'awk' 
installed. 'time' is different to the builtin time used by BASH and has more
features desired for this benchmark.
 
Simply cd into the kernel tree directory and type

/path/to/kernbench


Options

kernbench [-n runs] [-o jobs] [-s] [-H] [-O] [-M] [-h] [-v]
n : number of times to perform benchmark (default 5)
o : number of jobs for optimal run (default 4 * cpu)
s : perform single threaded runs (default don't)
H : don't perform half load runs (default do)
O : don't perform optimal load runs (default do)
M : don't perform maximal load runs (default do)
f : fast run
h : print this help
v : print version number


Changelog:
v0.30 Added fast run option which bypasses caching, warmup and tree 
	preparation and drops number of runs to 3. Modified half loads to 
	detect -j2 and change to -j3. Added syncs. Improved warnings and 
	messages. 

v0.20 Change to average of runs, add options to choose which runs to perform
	remove single threaded run from defaults, do warmup run, lots more
	sanity checks, drop meaningless runs, add a few warnings, remove fudge
	factor from no. of jobs.

v0.11 First public release


Thanks: M. Bligh for ideas. Others for help with magic incantations to get
	BASH to work.


Con Kolivas <kernbench@kolivas.org>
Mon Mar 1 12:18:08 2004

License:
GPL of course. Read COPYING included in this tarball.