Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261500AbVECSNf (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 May 2005 14:13:35 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261497AbVECSL5 (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 May 2005 14:11:57 -0400 Received: from wproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.184.197]:53632 "EHLO wproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261500AbVECSLG convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 May 2005 14:11:06 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=tGnz0WqiFjzhdr/8W1M1jax44Ov7//D84FwdW5H68bx9QGEAsp/QCJHqbsFrYt+OjB3SxaMGN888VX3qTfxkNunwT0SXA2vwe6Wy4E8RjWCvzLkC9Dwat+64UDrpsClo77rZ0D6m0ssCjBW1tVpAolvzHFbzBuuxFCKjBIGSoYw= Message-ID: Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 14:11:06 -0400 From: Haoqiang Zheng Reply-To: Haoqiang Zheng To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: question about contest benchmark Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1278 Lines: 26 I am wondering how we should interpret the CONTEST benchmark results. I tried CONTEST with process_load on 2.6.12-rc3 (single CPU, P4 2.8G, 1G RAM). The CPU usage of kernel compiling is 28.9%, the load consumes 70.1% and the ratio is 3.98. Based on what Con says, the result is bad since the ratio is high. I did some tracing and found the background load (contest) runs at a dynamic priority of 115-120, which is often higher than the dynamic priority of the kernel compiling processes. This explains why the process_load consumes so much CPU. My question is why is the result bad at all? One could certainly argue that contest processes shouldn't consume so much CPU time since they are considered to be background jobs. But why is kernel compiling considered foreground jobs? Why making kernel compiling faster is better? Actually, I am wondering if CONTEST is an appropriate benchmark to report system responsiveness at all? Any comments? BTW, what benchmark do you guys use to test system responsiveness? Haoqiang - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/