Re: mutexes, locks and so on...

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost>]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 07:56:33PM +0200, Antti Kantee wrote:
> 
> Dunno about NetBSD specifically, but this suggests great differences:
> http://www.netbsd.org/~ad/50/img15.html

The problem is that it demonstrates that NetBSD's better *on that hardware*
than it was.  There are confounding variables.  How would NetBSD perform
if the disk had twice the throughput and twice the latency, and page
faults were 10 times as expensive 1/3 of the time?  Hell if I know.

You and I may suspect that "that hardware" generalizes to "some interesting
population of hardware" but it's not exactly easy to prove it.  It is very
different to control this test so that it actually measures even a small
set of variables at a time, and all too many of the variables have nothing
to do with changes to NetBSD at all.

-- 
  Thor Lancelot Simon                                        
tls%rek.tjls.com@localhost

  "We cannot usually in social life pursue a single value or a single moral
   aim, untroubled by the need to compromise with others."      - H.L.A. Hart