[Ilugc] Debian installation
- From: rsubr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Raja Subramanian)
- Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 23:30:26 +1000
Hi,
Sridhar R wrote:
But the packages are compiled with i386
optimizations. Why should I go for old compiler
optimizations when I have modern hardware. Gentoo[1]
excels in this aspect.
This is a regular topic on most debian lists. Somebody even got the
auto builder working and started compiling the entire debian archive
with 686 optimizations.
Its silly to have your entire system optimized for your CPU. How much
faster is a 686 optimized version of cp/ls? Consider the logistics
involved here - additional load on package mirrors, distributing bug
fixes, etc and ask yourself if its worth the effort.
IMO, Debian has made a good decision by choosing compatibility over
performance.
This is digressing, but someone wanted benchmarks so I'll mention my
past adventures with CPU optimization. Some years ago, I compiled gzip
with optimizations and tried to benchmark it. I had to compress several
GB of data daily and would benefit from a fast gzip binary.
I used these gzip binaries for testing on a P3 and an AMD k7 -
o default debian gzip compiled for vanilla i386
o default redhat/mandrake binaries optimized for 686
o rolled several gzip binaries from src with various optimization
flags (used gcc 2.95)
Fair trials were conducted with -
o a 100MB file created from /dev/zero
o a 100MB file created from /dev/random
The disappointing result was that all gzip binaries clocked similar
run times. CPU optimization was not worth the effort in this case.
However, the biggest benefit was when I created an unoptimized static
gzip binary, which was ~30% faster than everything else.
Go figure!
- Raja
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