FreeBSD 7.1 BETA 2 vs Opensolaris vs Ubuntu performance

[Ivan Voras]

O. Hartmann wrote:
> Ivan Voras wrote:
> ...
> 
>>
>> OTOH if the goal is to measure "operating system" performance, this
>> must also include the compiler, libraries and all. (for example, what
>> does Solaris default to nowadays? I think it ships with gcc but not as
>> default). The hold on gcc 4.3 in FreeBSD is, after all, political
>> (licencing).
> 
> This is very bad to read :-(

I agree. GPL 3 is a bit hard on the non-GPL systems (i.e. harder than
GPL 2).

> Many of my colleaugues are involved in HPC, very little of them
> (including myself) utilizing FreeBSD even due to the lack of fast
> compilers. Yes, we all can use the port, that is right, but for those
> not so familiar and deep inside the underlying OS, with newer, better
> hardware (CPUs with some interesting hardware features like SSE3/4) a
> on-track-following compiler like GCC 4.3 could make use of special
> features introduced in newer hardware and even due to better
> optimizations compile a faster OS. And the result, even in 3% or 5%
> performance gain is appreciated if model-runs taking days or weeks!

AFAIK, gcc 4.3+ will always be available in the ports so users that need
it will always have it available (it's available there now!). It's just
that the base compiler will either stay 4.2, switch to something else
(Roman Divacky is working on LLVM+clang), or bite the bullet (with
possible workarounds for undesireable parts of GPL3) and switch to a
newer gcc.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-performance/attachments/20081126/0fdc0506/signature.pgp