lmbench: Portable tools for performance analysis
Larry McVoy
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Carl Staelin
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Abstract
lmbench is a micro-benchmark suite designed to focus attention on the
basic building blocks of many common system applications, such as
databases, simulations, software development, and networking. In
almost all cases, the individual tests are the result of analysis and
isolation of a customer's actual performance problem. These tools can
be, and currently are, used to compare different system
implementations from different vendors. In several cases, the
benchmarks have uncovered previously unknown bugs and design flaws.
The results have shown a strong correlation between memory system
performance and overall performance. lmbench includes an extensible
database of results from systems current as of late 1995.
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