PAE and balloon benchmarks

[Jean-Yves Migeon <jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost>]

Hi lists,

FWIW, I just uploaded a wiki page for my results regarding PAE
benchmarks [1].

In short:

- expect 10-20% overhead in specific benchmarks for PAE; nothing new
here, there have been critics on PAE performance loss multiple times.

- yes, having no MP capable kernel for Xen makes a big different if you
launch parallel builds within the same domain :)

- balloon thread added by cherry@ does not seem to introduce regression
for process/thread creation and scheduling.

I have (more) detailed results if anybody wants them.

In essence, unless you need some functionality only offered by PAE (NX
bit - when supported - , 4GB+ physical memory support without having 64
bits, or Xen 3.3+ compatilibty), I suppose you are better off going the
64 bits route, especially with 32 bits compat mode.

[1] http://wiki.netbsd.org/users/jym/benchmarks/

Cheers,

-- 
Jean-Yves Migeon
jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost