From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261751AbULBU23 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Dec 2004 15:28:29 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261753AbULBU2Z (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Dec 2004 15:28:25 -0500 Received: from alog0004.analogic.com ([208.224.220.19]:5248 "EHLO chaos.analogic.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261751AbULBU2E (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Dec 2004 15:28:04 -0500 Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 15:25:07 -0500 (EST) From: linux-os Reply-To: linux-os@analogic.com To: cliff white cc: Jeff Garzik , mbligh@aracnet.com, akpm@osdl.org, torvalds@osdl.org, clameter@sgi.com, hugh@veritas.com, benh@kernel.crashing.org, nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: page fault scalability patch V12 [0/7]: Overview and performance tests In-Reply-To: <20041202101029.7fe8b303.cliffw@osdl.org> Message-ID: References: <41AEB44D.2040805@pobox.com> <20041201223441.3820fbc0.akpm@osdl.org> <41AEBAB9.3050705@pobox.com> <20041201230217.1d2071a8.akpm@osdl.org> <179540000.1101972418@[10.10.2.4]> <41AEC4D7.4060507@pobox.com> <20041202101029.7fe8b303.cliffw@osdl.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, cliff white wrote: > On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 02:31:35 -0500 > Jeff Garzik wrote: > >> Martin J. Bligh wrote: >>> Yeah, probably. Though the stress tests catch a lot more than the >>> functionality ones. The big pain in the ass is drivers, because I don't >>> have a hope in hell of testing more than 1% of them. >> >> My dream is that hardware vendors rotate their current machines through >> a test shop :) It would be nice to make sure that the popular drivers >> get daily test coverage. >> >> Jeff, dreaming on > It isn't going to happen until the time when the vendors call somebody a liar, try to get them fired, and then that somebody takes them to court and they lose 100 million dollars or so. Until that happens, vendors will continue to make junk and they will continue to lie about the performance of that junk. It doesn't help that Software Engineering has become a "hardware junk fixing" job. Basically many vendors in the PC and PC peripheral business are, for lack of a better word, liars who are in the business of perpetrating fraud upon the unsuspecting PC user. We have vendors who convincingly change mega-bits to mega-bytes, improving performance 8-fold without any expense at all. We have vendors reducing the size of a kilobyte and a megabyte, then getting the new lies entered into dictionaries, etc. The scheme goes on. In the meantime, if you try to perform DMA across a PCI/Bus at or near the specified rates, you will learn that the specifications are for "this chip" or "that chip", and have nothing to do with the performance when these chips get connected together. You will find that real performance is about 20 percent of the specification. Occasionally you find a vendor that doesn't lie and the same chip-set magically performs close to the published specifications. This is becoming rare because it costs money to build motherboards that work. This might require two or more prototypes to get the timing just right so the artificial delays and re-clocking, used to make junk work, isn't required. Once the PC (and not just the desk-top PC) became a commodity, everything points to the bottom-line. You get into the business by making something that looks and smells new. Then you sell it by writing specifications that are better than the most expensive on the market. Your sales-price is set below average market so you can unload this junk as rapidly as possible. Then, you do this over again, claiming that your equipment is "state-of-the-art"! And if anybody ever tests the junk and claims that it doesn't work as specified, you contact the president of his company and try to kill the messenger. Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.6.9 on an i686 machine (5537.79 BogoMips). Notice : All mail here is now cached for review by John Ashcroft. 98.36% of all statistics are fiction.