LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Mat Farrington <mafarrin@holon.com.au>
  To  : Stephen Baxter <steve@senet.com.au>
  Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 13:48:06 +0930

Re: User hardware/software profile.

Stephen Baxter wrote:

> We have a Pro 200 and get around 199 BogoMIPS. Can yo tell me some more
> about your smp machine :

Yeah, same for me - 199.07 for each Pro 200.

> How well does it work with Linux ?
> Is it stable with Linux ?
> Does any software have major problems with it ?

I sent the following email to the Linux SMP mailing list a week or two
ago:

> I recently got SMP working on the following system:
> 
>     o ASUS P/I-P65UP5/P6ND M'board Combo
>     o 2x Pentium Pro 200MHz CPU
>     o 128Mbytes EDO RAM (4x32)
>     o ET6000 Video Card
>     o 2x EIDE Western Digital HDD
>     o Soundblaster 16
>     o IDE/ADAPI CD-ROM
>     o 3COM PCI 3C-590 Networking
>     o Slackware Linux (2.0.29 kernel)
> 
> Things seem to be working fine.  I've accessed all my devices and run
> all my day-to-day tools and applications for the last week or so with no
> noticable problems.
> 
> Since I'm pretty new to SMP I was hoping someone could tell me if I've
> just been lucky so far.  Am I playing with fire using 2.0.29 on the
> hardware listed above?  (The most recent messages in the linux-SMP
> archive refer to 2.0.30 plus various SMP-specific patches on top.)

The response was positive.

> Is the performance increase noticeable ?

For me yes.  I run engineering simulations and have real audio or quake
or some fun stuff happening at the same time.  Quake maintains the same
frame-rate and responsiveness that it had when I only had the one CPU
and nothing else running.  :-)

When I am only running one process I see some speed-up due to the fact
that the OS stuff and my process can live on seperate CPUs.  I'll do
some benchmarking and get back to you with some numbers.  Maybe a kernel
compilation with SMP on and SMP off.

Yeah, so if it's for number-crunching or as a server (lots of concurrent
processes), or with mutli-threaded programs then you see the speed up. 
If you're a single-user looking for your favourite single-threaded
application to be twice as fast then you're better-off buying a single
CPU that performs like a Pro400.

(The two CPUs are sharing the same hard drive and the same memory, so
you'll not see 2x speed-up of the system...  But at least with Pros they
don't have to share the L2-Cache like in SMP Pentiums.  :-)

I've also noticed that my majordomo, httpd, pnserver etc respond a lot
quicker.  I guess it's because there's usually a CPU eager to get
started on some new work.  :-)  Only one of CPUs polices interrupts
though.

The simulation tools I run are memory-hogs but not disk hogs (unless
they swap).  So I can have one of my manufacturing simulations speeding
along, and then do a kernel compilation, grab a coffee, come back, and
the compilation is finished.

Sorry about the lack of quantitative info.  I'll get back to you (all)
with some numbers when I have a bit of spare time.

Mat F.
-- 
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