This document compares the performances of 2.x Linux kernels
at compiling a 2.4.25 kernel image with increasing levels of
make parallelism.
| CPU | AMD K6 200 MHz |
|---|---|
| RAM | 64 MB SDRAM 66 MHz |
| Motherboard | Asus TXP4-X (chipset i82430TX) |
| PCI | Advanced System Products, Inc ABP940-U / ABP960-U (rev 02) |
| Davicom Semiconductor, Inc. Ethernet 100/10 MBit (rev 40) | |
| Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 02) | |
| Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 2164W [Millennium II] | |
| SCSI | QUANTUM XP34550S (4 GB, 7200 rpm, /dev/sda) |
SEAGATE ST51080N (1 GB, 5400 rpm, /dev/sdb) | |
PIONEER CD-ROM DR-U24X (/dev/scd0) |
The installed software distribution is Debian Woody.
/dev/sda2 | / | 98 MB |
/dev/sda5 | swap | 131 MB |
/dev/sda6 | /usr | 1497 MB |
/dev/sdb | /hd2 (contains /var and /home) | 1077 MB |
The second extended file system is used on all partitions.
| Kernel | compiled with | note | config |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.0.40 | GCC 2.7.2.3 | no sound, no USB, no network, no NTFS support | .config |
| 2.2.26 | GCC 2.95.4 | Build fails without CONFIG_MODULES | .config |
| 2.4.25 | GCC 2.95.4 | .config | |
| 2.6.3 | GCC 2.95.4 | .config |
The measured kernel build was done in
/home/marc/C/linux-2.4.25/: Elapsed time (in minutes) results of
for i in 1 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24; do echo $i >>~/dat; /usr/bin/time -a -o ~/dat make -j $i bzImage; make clean;done
In conclusion, performances were slightly better with each new major
kernel, until kernel 2.6 arrived. Kernel 2.6 is really slow at swapping, but
it produces a good quality MP3 output even under heavy swapping.
© 2004 Marc Mongenet,
,
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Last update and
validation:
15-MAR-2006.