I've a test system running NetBSD-1.1, and another nearly identical
production machine running SunOS-4.1.1_U1.

I happened to have them both in single user mode the other day, and
decided to do a number of memory copy tests (I needed to excercise the
RAM anyway, as I was worried about some uncorrected and un-noticed
errors.)  I simply used dd(1) to copy from /dev/mem to /dev/null, with
nothing but the default options.  Here's the results:

	most.weird.com			always.weird.com
	SunOS-4.1.1_U1			NetBSD-1.1
	Sun 3/280			Sun 3/280
	2x16KB RAM + 2x8KB RAM		4x8KB RAM
	272 blocks / second		1129 blocks / second

What's wrong?!?!?  Is NetBSD really that much better at getting data
from kernel memory, through a device, and into a process?  Does NetBSD
optimize the write()s away for /dev/null?  What's going on?

[Please reply to me directly via the specified Reply-To header as well
as the list -- I don't get to read the list very often these days.]

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734			VE3TCP			robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets Of The Weird <woods@weird.com>