Penguin
Recent Changes

This page covers the Kernel Compilation Benchmark, which is often used to provide a rough comparison of system performance. This page used to use a 2.4.19 default config to do this benchmark, this data still exists at KernelCompilationTimes2.4. The 2.4.19 kernel is a bit old now, and the 2.6 build process has changed a lot, so we've updated this to use 2.6.8 as the test Kernel.

A few things have changed - there is no longer any need to run make dep or make modules, so there will only be one time output. You will need to run make defconfig first, otherwise it will try to build a host-specific config for your computer.

It's still important to perform the compile as soon as you untar the Kernel source, to ensure the source is still in disk cache.

(In /usr/src, with the 2.6.8 source downloaded already)

 tar jxf linux-2.6.8.tar.bz2
 # or tar zxf linux-2.6.8.tar.gz
 cd linux-2.6.8
 # use the default config
 make defconfig
 /usr/bin/time -p -o /tmp/dep.time make

If you have a machine with more than one processor, you can use make -j n .... where n is the number of cpus + 1

Name: deuterium
OS: Gentoo 2004.2 Linux 2.6.8
Hardware: P4 2.8C Northwood, 1024 MB DDR400 RAM, Intel D865GLC Motherboard
Notes: SMP + SMT enabled
/proc/cpuinfo:

 processor       : 1
 vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
 cpu family      : 15
 model           : 2
 model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz
 stepping        : 9
 cpu MHz         : 2793.238
 cache size      : 512 KB

make

  • real 7m26.87s
  • user 7m00.68s
  • sys 0m31.68s

make -j3

  • real 7m25.23s
  • user 7m01.32s
  • sys 0m31.43s

Name: voodoo
OS: Debian Woody 3.0 2.4.26
Hardware: Dual Athlon 1800MP+ (1533MHz), 2048 MB RAM
Notes:
/proc/cpuinfo:

 processor       : 1
 vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
 cpu family      : 6
 model           : 6
 model name      : AMD Athlon(TM) MP 1800+
 stepping        : 2
 cpu MHz         : 1533.398
 cache size      : 256 KB

make

  • real 7m05.12s
  • user 6m08.19s
  • sys 0m43.02s

make -j3

  • real 4m36.29s
  • user 6m22.54s
  • sys 0m45.22s

Name: Wildfire
OS: Gentoo 2.6.7-gentoo-r11
Hardware: Dual Opteron 244, 2048MB Ram
/proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 5
model name      : AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 244
stepping        : 8
cpu MHz         : 1792.241
cache size      : 1024 KB

make

  • real 4m42.88s
  • user 4m10.97s
  • sys 0m34.17s

make -j 3

  • real 2m30.92s
  • user 4m12.54s
  • sys 0m34.84s

Name: kiakaha
OS: Debian Sarge 3.1 Linux 2.6.7
Hardware: Dual P3 1GHz, 1.5 GB RAM
Notes:
/proc/cpuinfo:

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 8
model name      : Pentium III (Coppermine)
stepping        : 10
cpu MHz         : 999.703
cache size      : 256 KB

make:

  • real 13m22.91s
  • user 12m06.51s
  • sys 1m01.81s

make -j4 (make -j3, for some reason, didn't parallelise at all)

  • real 7m16.06s
  • user 12m46.04s
  • sys 1m07.41s

Name: loki
OS: Gentoo 2004.2 linux 2.6.7
Hardware: AMD64 3000+ with 512MB RAM
/proc/cpuinfo:

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 12
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 2009.804
cache size      : 512 KB

make:

  • real 6m58.06s
  • user 6m17.01s
  • sys 0m34.15s

Name:
OS:
Hardware:
/proc/cpuinfo:

processor       :
vendor_id       :
cpu family      :
model           :
model name      :
stepping        :
cpu MHz         :
cache size      :

make:

CategoryKernel