computation-friendly kernels
Bevan C. Bennett
bevan at fulcrummicro.com
Thu Jan 8 18:38:23 UTC 2004
I suspect a full answer to this may be too involved for this list, but
maybe someone a little more into kernel hacking than I've been lately
could point me in the right direction.
I have two identical servers, one running FC1 and one running severn
(RHEL3beta). The installed kernels are:
kernel-smp-2.4.22-1.2138.nptl (FC1)
kernel-smp-2.4.21-1.1931.2.399.ent (severn)
I have a very highly multithreaded application that runs generally 4x
slower on FC1, but occassionally takes 20x as long. Interestingly, the
"user" time in all cases is very consistant, and on the non-FC1 system
real time is only fractionally higher than user time. So... I suspect
that there's some kernel parameter, memory management scheme or
scheduling configuration difference causing the performance disparity.
My question is whether there's any hope of discovering which difference
is involved and 'fixing' the FC1 system (or even of easily enumerating
what the differences actually are)?
I know that FC is aimed more at a desktop/general user release (and is
the best Linux I've used so far for that purpose), and that ideally I'd
help support RedHat by purchasing 100 copies of RHEL for my heavy
computing, but there are unfortunate budgetary forces involved that
prohibit that at the moment. If the company situation improves, that's
the way I'd like to go eventually.
I'm willing to compile custom kernels for a 4x speedup and better
consistancy, but I'd like to keep the number of different distributions
in active use to a minimum (every different distribution adds more work
in creating and maintaining compatible configuration info).
Any informed suggestions from the community?
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