A while back I sent out an email requesting good benchmarks for SMP
Alpha machines. The only seemingly viable response I received was one
recommending the SPLASH benchmark, with a request to post my results. I
obtained and attempted to use the SPLASH2 set of programs which are
available from www-flash.stanford.edu.
Here is what I found:
1) The benchmark programs do not compile as downloaded. There is some
problem with missing identifiers and external functions. This was done
with the null macros supplied with the benchmark suite on a UP Alpha
(our development platform). The null macros are supposed to nullify the
SMP nature of the tests and allow them to be compiled for a UP test.
This failed.
2) The only available references in the supplied material are obsolete
email addresses for people/groups that I would have to guess are no
longer available at Stanford.
3) The only available sets of macros that are "done" are for three
machines, none of which matches Linux or Alpha. The closest set, that
for SGI's IRIX, include a precompiled library with no apparent source
and no references on how to construct an equivalent for other machines.
I suppose that I could spend a lot of time and effort tracking these
specific problems down and resolving them, and I have no doubt that I
could. However, my charter at the moment does not allow for this kind
of time and effort, and is unlikely to for the foreseeable future.
Any other suggestions for benchmarks that are viable, either for Linux
or Alpha or both, would be most welcome. Of course I will publish
whatever I find that is of interest.
For the record, the Harvard benchmark that I was using (hbench) coupled
with a modified version of Stephen Tweedie's sard program that I wrote
to generate interrupt statistics revealed one fact (confirmed) of which
I had been previously unaware: multi-CPU Alpha systems do not distribute
interrupts across the processors. CPU 0 handles all of them. My
Compaq/Digital contact tells me that there was no demand for this, so it
wasn't done.
Regards.
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