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author | Markus Goetz <Markus.Goetz@nokia.com> | 2010-08-17 14:31:14 (GMT) |
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committer | Markus Goetz <Markus.Goetz@nokia.com> | 2010-08-17 14:44:18 (GMT) |
commit | acfa3c743c23ca2443d618bda6f3c01f78777b77 (patch) | |
tree | 1f4b05e114fede815bcae7a62ae710fba0006965 /tests/benchmarks | |
parent | ab97e11919927d38bfc2be990d2b4dd1327083ea (diff) | |
download | Qt-acfa3c743c23ca2443d618bda6f3c01f78777b77.zip Qt-acfa3c743c23ca2443d618bda6f3c01f78777b77.tar.gz Qt-acfa3c743c23ca2443d618bda6f3c01f78777b77.tar.bz2 |
Add tests/benchmarks/README
With some information from the dev mailing list.
Reviewed-by: Thiago
Diffstat (limited to 'tests/benchmarks')
-rw-r--r-- | tests/benchmarks/README | 81 |
1 files changed, 81 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/tests/benchmarks/README b/tests/benchmarks/README new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d437299 --- /dev/null +++ b/tests/benchmarks/README @@ -0,0 +1,81 @@ +The most reliable way of running benchmarks is to do it in an otherwise idle +system. On a busy system, the results will vary according to the other tasks +demanding attention in the system. + +We have managed to obtain quite reliable results by doing the following on +Linux (and you need root): + + - switching the scheduler to a Real-Time mode + - setting the processor affinity to one single processor + - disabling the other thread of the same core + +This should work rather well for CPU-intensive tasks. A task that is in Real- +Time mode will simply not be preempted by the OS. But if you make OS syscalls, +especially I/O ones, your task will be de-scheduled. Note that this includes +page faults, so if you can, make sure your benchmark's warmup code paths touch +most of the data. + +To do this you need a tool called schedtool (package schedtool), from +http://freequaos.host.sk/schedtool/ + +From this point on, we are using CPU0 for all tasks: + +If you have a Hyperthreaded multi-core processor (Core-i5 and Core-i7), you +have to disable the other thread of the same core as CPU0. To discover which +one it is: + +$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/topology/thread_siblings_list + +This will print something like 0,4, meaning that CPUs 0 and 4 are sibling +threads on the same core. So we'll turn CPU 4 off: + +(as root) +# echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu4/online + +To turn it back on, echo 1 into the same file. + +To run a task on CPU 0 exclusively, using FIFO RT priority 10, you run the +following: + +(as root) +# schedtool -F -p 10 -a 1 -e ./taskname + +For example: +# schedtool -F -p 10 -a 1 -e ./tst_bench_qstring -tickcounter + +Warning: if your task livelocks or takes far too long to complete, your system +may be unusable for a long time, especially if you don't have other cores to +run stuff on. To prevent that, run it before schedtool and time it. + +You can also limit the CPU time that the task is allowed to take. Run in the +same shell as you'll run schedtool: + +$ ulimit -s 300 +To limit to 300 seconds (5 minutes) + +If your task runs away, it will get a SIGXCPU after consuming 5 minutes of CPU +time (5 minutes running at 100%). + +If your app is multithreaded, you may want to give it more CPUs, like CPU0 and +CPU1 with -a 3 (it's a bitmask). + +For best results, you should disable ALL other cores and threads of the same +processor. The new Core-i7 have one processor with 4 cores, +each core can run 2 threads; the older Mac Pros have two processors with 4 +cores each. So on those Mac Pros, you'd disable cores 1, 2 and 3, while on the +Core-i7, you'll need to disable all other CPUs. + +However, disabling just the sibling thread seems to produce very reliable +results for me already, with variance often below 0.5% (even though there are +some measurable spikes). + +Other things to try: + +Running the benchmark with highest priority, i.e. "sudo nice -19" +usually produces stable results on some machines. If the benchmark also +involves displaying something on the screen (on X11), running it with +"-sync" is a must. Though, in that case the "real" cost is not correct, +but it is useful to discover regressions. + +Also; not many people know about ionice (1) + ionice - get/set program io scheduling class and priority |