Linux kernel compilation benchmark

Introduction

I originally started the "Linux kernel compilation benchmark" on July 1, 1998 with the following introduction:

Since I have been running Linux since the v0.10 days, I thought it would be useful to perform some benchmarks under Linux. Here are my findings.

As I have time (and access to equipment) to add additional results, I will update this page. I have added more PII results on September 1, 1998, M-2 results on September 13&16, 1998, WinChip 6 on November 22, 1998, Celeron 300A results on December 9, 1998, and K6-2 400 on February 16, 1999.

I have been updating this article as often as I have been able to try re-compiling the Linux kernel on new processors; and I will continue to update it as I get access to other processors.

Today (April 4, 1999) I am adding Celeron 400A and K6-3 400 test results. You may find them surprising - I know I was pleasantly surprised!

This article is an ongoing project; and now I have added a bar chart showing the relative performance of all of the processors at all tested clock speeds.

Unfortunately, I have only tested compilation speeds on x86 processors; however should an Alpha, StrongArm, PowerPC, UltraSparc or TransMeta based motherboard find itself at CPUReview you can bet I'll benchmark it... New x86 designs are also welcome :-)

[Editor's Note: the previous paragraph was a blatant attempt to interest manufacturers in CPUReview reviewing their processors. Should you be interested in CPUReview benchmarking your processors / motherboards / video cards etc., please contact me.]

With this latest update there are now 52 separate test results documented in this article. All of the tests were run from the same hard disk, with exactly the same configuration options.

This article now covers: WinChip 240, Cyrix PR233 & PR300, K6-2 266 & 400, K6-3 400, P-2 233 & 333, Celeron 300A and 400A, at specified and overclocked settings.

You may ask: "Why are you not using a newer kernel / compiler / distribution?" - the answer is simple: The results would not be directly comparable with my current database of results!

Continue to System Configurations...

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