cmp(1) has a bottleneck, but where?

[Garrett Cooper]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Dieter BSD <dieterbsd at engineer.com> wrote:
> Task: cp(1) a several-GB file from one drive to another,
> then run cmp(1) to verify.  Cp runs as expected, but
> cmp runs slower than expected.  Neither the disks
> nor the cpu is maxed out.  Local drives, no network
> involved.  Machine is otherwise idle.

    1. How are you running cmp?
    2. Why do you claim cmp is the bottleneck? Is it spinning the CPU?
Thanks,
-Garrett