Cached file read performance

David Xu davidxu at freebsd.org
Thu Dec 21 18:08:10 PST 2006


Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> I recently did some testing on the performance of cached reads using two 
> (almost identical) systems, one running FreeBSD 6.2PRE and the other 
> running Gentoo Linux - the latter acting as a control. I initially 
> started a thread of the same name on -stable, but it was suggested I 
> submit a mail here.
> 
> My background for wanting to examine this is that I work with developing 
> database software (postgres internals related) and cached read 
> performance is pretty important - since we typically try hard to 
> encourage cached access whenever possible.
> 
> Anyway on to the results: I used the attached program to read a cached 
> 781MB file sequentially and randomly with a specified block size (see 
> below). The conclusion I came to was that our (i.e FreeBSD) cached read 
> performance (particularly for smaller block sizes) could perhaps be 
> improved... now I'm happy to help in any way - the machine I've got 
> running STABLE can be upgraded to CURRENT in order to try out patches 
> (or in fact to see if CURRENT is faster at this already!)...
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Mark
> 

I suspect in such a test, memory copying speed will be a key factor,
I don't have number to back up my idea, but I think Linux has lots
of tweaks, such as using MMX instruction to copy data.

Regards,
David Xu



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