terry@pride38.UUCP (sys mngr) (02/01/90)
here's something we all want but just haven't asked for; a benchmark program for Unix. A program that stands alone on a floppy! just take your copy in the store and get some results that are useful to multi-users like this would test disk access, cpu speed, bus speed and what ever else you could get on a 5 1/4 disk.... terry @ ..!pride386
tinle@aimt.UU.NET (Tin Le) (02/02/90)
In article <185@pride38.UUCP>, terry@pride38.UUCP (sys mngr) writes: > here's something we all want but just haven't asked for; > a benchmark program for Unix. A program that stands alone on a floppy! > just take your copy in the store and get some results that are useful to > multi-users like this would test disk access, cpu speed, bus speed and what ever > else you could get on a 5 1/4 disk.... > > terry @ ..!pride386 I agree with you about the need for a minibenchmark that can help a user considering the purchase of a UN*X system. It won't be a thorough benchmark (not supposed to be), but will be useful as a first cut type to eliminate systems you don't want to waste time on. AIM Technology sells a series of UN*X benchmarks. Our benchmarks are meant to be used by OEMs and manufacturers (they all come with source license). I've started putting together a simple minibenchmark using bits and pieces of our current benchmarks. Even got it working to generate a series of simple numbers (similar to the DOS SI ratings, or the Landmark numbers). Of course, these numbers are about as meaningful as the "MIPS" number (Meaningless Indicator of Performance Statistics). They are useful only as a relative ranking to remove systems from further consideration. The minor problem is that the minibenchmark I wrote compose of source code fragments from our other products and can not be release into the public. I've thought about this for a while and came up with several possible solutions: 1. UN*X in the 80x86 world is/will be standardized enough to actually have binary portability (similar to DOS programs). I can release binaries that will run under S5R3 compiled for a 286 that is guarantee to run on most 80x86 based systems running Sys5 compat OS. I am assuming that no one wants to buy an 8088/86 system to run UN*X on (do you know of any?). 2. The same can be said for binary ABI for the Sparc, MIPS, and 88K. Voila, no need to release source code. The last hurdle now is that I am working on a new project and have not had time to work on this minibenchmark. If there is enough interest (read: financially self supporting), I can try to convince management into letting me work on this and releasing it. Here are details on the minibenchmark. It will give numbers for 7 categories: - System calls - Function calls - Integer Math - Floating Math - IPC (shared-mem, mesg q, pipes) throughput - Disk r/w/copy throughput - RAM throughput It will do some 'magic' with the 7 numbers to output a single number representing the machine's relative ranking to some standard system. I decided on using a plain 80386/16Mhz/4MB RAM/120MB ESDI HD system as the standard (because that seems to be a common configuration). I have a single binary that will run on Xenix 286/386, ISC 386, Microport 286/386. How many of you out there are really, really interested in something like this? (A common minibenchmark). -- Tin Le