delorie.com/archives/browse.cgi   search  
Mail Archives: cygwin/2004/03/23/22:09:19

Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
From: Robert Mecklenburg <mecklen AT comcast DOT net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <16480.64460.156000.338305@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 20:09:00 -0700
To: Cygwin Users List <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: GNU Make performance question

I am writing a document on the performance of gnu make and various
makefiles and came across something I can't explain.

To measure the speed of gnu make $(subst...) versus sed I wrote this
simple makefile:

  p1000 := ...<1000 character string with periodic semicolons>...
  # This simple assignment 10000 times.
  x := $(subst ;, ,$(p1000))
  ...

I then run this makefile 10 times and average the times.  I ran the
makefile on Windows XP with Cygwin and a Linux system with RedHat 9:

  Windows XP     1.8 GHz/P4/512MB	 82644 assignments / second
  Linux	  	 450 MHz/P2/256MB	111111 assignments / second

As you can see the puny 450 MHz P2 managed to kick Windows ass.  I'm
at a total loss to explain why, though.  For instance,

* Both systems were idle, with no memory hogging apps running (the
  Windows machine was freshly booted)

* The test runs the makefile only 10 times, for only 10 process
  create/loads and 100000 assignments

* The test seems to be entirely cpu bound, with both executables
  compiled by gcc (albeit different versions)

Could this be entirely explained by the difference in process creation
times?  I would have thought that the 4 times clock rate and beefier
ram would have adequately compensated.

Note, this is not - in any way - a complaint about performance.  I'd
just like to understand the reasons.

Thanks,
Robert


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

- Raw text -


  webmaster     delorie software   privacy  
  Copyright © 2019   by DJ Delorie     Updated Jul 2019