[sisyphus] [Fwd: [ck] [ANNOUNCE] Interbench v0.20 - Interactivity benchmark]

Konstantin A. Lepikhov =?iso-8859-1?q?lakostis_=CE=C1_anti-leasure=2Eru?=
Вт Июл 12 15:17:58 MSD 2005



------------------ Исходное сообщение -------------------
Тема:   [ck] [ANNOUNCE] Interbench v0.20 - Interactivity benchmark
От:       "Con Kolivas" <kernel@>
Дата:   Втр, Июль 12, 2005 15:10
Кому:   "linux kernel mailing list" <linux-kernel на vger.kernel.org>
Копия: "ck list" <ck@>
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	Interbench - The Linux Interactivity Benchmark v0.20

http://interbench.kolivas.org

direct download link:
http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/interbench/interbench-0.20.tar.bz2

	Introduction

This benchmark application is designed to benchmark interactivity in Linux.

	Interactivity, what is it?

There has been a lot of talk about what makes up a nice feeling desktop
under linux. It comes down to two different but intimately related
parameters which are not well defined. We often use the terms
responsiveness and interactivity in the same sentence, but I'd like to
separate the two. As there is no formal definition I prefer to define them
as such:

Responsiveness: The rate at which your workloads can proceed under
different load conditions.

Interactivity: The scheduling latency and jitter present in tasks where
the  user would notice a palpable deterioration under different load
conditions.

Responsiveness would allow you to continue using your machine without too
much interruption to your work, whereas interactivity would allow you to
play audio or video without any dropouts, or drag a gui window across the
screen and have it render smoothly across the screen without jerks .

Contest was a benchmark originally written by me to test system
responsiveness, and interbench is a benchmark I wrote as a sequel to
contest  to test interactivity.

It is designed to measure the effect of changes in Linux kernel design or 
system
configuration changes such as cpu, I/O scheduler and filesystem changes
and options. With careful benchmarking, different hardware can be
compared.


	What does it do?

It is designed to emulate the cpu scheduling behaviour of interactive
tasks  and
measure their scheduling latency and jitter. It does this with the tasks
on their own and then in the presence of various background loads, both
with configurable nice levels and the benchmarked tasks can be real time.


	How does it work?

First it benchmarks how best to reproduce a fixed percentage of cpu usage
on  the machine currently being used for the benchmark. It saves this to a
file  and then uses this for all subsequent runs to keep the emulation of
cpu usage  constant.

It runs a real time high priority timing thread that wakes up the thread
or threads of the simulated interactive tasks and then measures the
latency in  the time taken to schedule. As there is no accurate timer
driven scheduling  in linux the timing thread sleeps as accurately as
linux kernel supports, and  latency is considered as the time from this
sleep till the simulated task  gets scheduled.


	What interactive tasks are simulated and how?

X:
X is simulated as a thread that uses a variable amount of cpu ranging from
0  to 100%. This simulates an idle gui where a window is grabbed and then 
dragged across the screen.

Audio:
Audio is simulated as a thread that tries to run at 50ms intervals that
then requires 5% cpu. This behaviour ignores any caching that would
normally be  done by well designed audio applications, but has been seen
as the interval  used to write to audio cards by a popular linux audio
player. It also ignores  any of the effects of different audio drivers and
audio cards. Audio can also  be run as a real time SCHED_FIFO task.

Video:
Video is simulated as a thread that tries to receive cpu 60 times per
second and uses 40% cpu. This would be quite a demanding video playback at
60fps.  Like the audio simulator it ignores caching, drivers and video
cards. As per  audio, video can be run SCHED_FIFO.


	What loads are simulated?

None:
Otherwise idle system.

Video:
The video simulation thread is also used as a background load.

X:
The X simulation thread is used as a load.

Burn:
A configurable number of threads fully cpu bound (4 by default).

Write:
A streaming write to disk repeatedly of a file the size of physical ram.

Read:
Repeatedly reading a file from disk the size of physical ram (to avoid any
caching effects).

Compile:
Simulating a heavy 'make -j4' compilation by running Burn, Write and Read
concurrently.

Memload:
Simulating heavy memory and swap pressure by repeatedly accessing 110% of
available ram and moving it around and freeing it.


	What is measured and what does it mean?

1. The average scheduling latency (time to requesting cpu till actually 
getting
it) of deadlines met during the test period.
2. The scheduling jitter is represented by calculating the standard
deviation of the latency
3. The maximum latency seen during the test period
4. Percentage of desired cpu
5. Percentage of deadlines met.

This data is output to console and saved to a file which is stamped with
the kernel name and date. Use fixed font for clarity:

	Sample:
--- Benchmarking X in the presence of loads ---
	Latency +/- SD (ms)  Max Latency   % Desired CPU  % Deadlines Met
None	  0.495 +/- 0.495         45		 100	         96
Video	   11.7 +/- 11.7        1815		89.6	       62.7
Burn	   27.9 +/- 28.1        3335		78.5	         44
Write	   4.02 +/- 4.03         372		  97	       78.7
Read	   1.09 +/- 1.09         158		99.7	         88
Compile	   28.8 +/- 28.8        3351		78.2	       43.7
Memload	   2.81 +/- 2.81         187		98.7	         85

What can be seen here is that never during this test run were all the so 
called deadlines met by the X simulator, although all the desired cpu was 
achieved under no load. In X terms this means that every bit of window 
movement was drawn while moving the window, but some were delayed and
there  was enough time to catch up before the next deadline. In the 'Burn'
column we  can see that only 44% of the deadlines were met, and only 78.5%
of the  desired cpu was achieved. This means that some deadlines were so
late  (%deadlines met was low) that some redraws were dropped entirely to
catch up.  In X terms this would translate into jerky movement, in audio
it would be a  skip, and in video it would be a dropped frame. Note that
despite the massive  maximum latency of >3seconds, the average latency is
still less than 30ms.  This is because redraws are dropped in order to
catch up usually by these  sorts of applications.


	What is relevant in the data?

The results pessimise quite a lot what happens in real world terms because
 they ignore the reality of buffering, but this allows us to pick up
subtle  differences more readily. In terms of what would be noticed by the
end user, dropping deadlines would make noticable clicks in audio, subtle
visible frame time delays in video, and loss of "smooth" movement in X.
Dropping desired cpu would be much more noticeable with audio skips,
missed video frames or jerks in window movement under X. The magnitude of
these would be best represented  by the maximum latency. When the
deadlines are actually met, the average  latency represents how "smooth"
it would look. Average humans' limit of  perception for jitter is in the
order of 7ms. Trained audio observers might  notice much less.


	How to use it?

In response to critisicm of difficulty in setting up my previous
benchmark,  contest, I've made this as simple as possible.

	Short version:
make
./interbench

	Longer version:
Build with 'make'. It is a single executable once built so if you desire
to install it simply copy the interbench binary wherever you like.

To get good reproducible data from it you should boot into runlevel one so
that nothing else is running on the machine. All power saving (cpu
throttling, cpu frequency modifications) must be disabled on the first run
to get an accurate measurement for cpu usage. You may enable them later if
you are benchmarking their effect on interactivity on that machine. Root
is almost mandatory for this benchmark, or real time privileges at the
very least. You need free disk space in the directory it is being run in
the order of 2* your physical ram for the disk loads. A default run in
v0.20 takes about 15 minutes to complete, longer if your disk is slow.

Command line options supported:
interbench [-l <int>] [-L <int>] [-t <int] [-B <int>] [-N <int>] [-b] [-c]
 [-h] [-n] [-r]
 -l     Use <int> loops per sec (default: use saved benchmark)
 -L     Use cpu load of <int> with burn load (default: 4)
 -t     Seconds to run each benchmark (default: 30)
 -B     Nice the benchmarked thread to <int> (default: 0)
 -N     Nice the load thread to <int> (default: 0)
 -b     Benchmark loops_per_ms even if it is already known
 -c     Output to console only (default: use console and logfile)
 -r     Perform real time scheduling benchmarks (default: non-rt)
 -h     Show this help

There is one hidden option which is not supported by default, -u
which emulates a uniprocessor when run on an smp machine. The support for
cpu affinity is not built in by default because there are multiple
versions of the sched_setaffinity call in glibc that not only accept
different variable types but across architectures take different numbers
of arguments. For x86 support you can change the '#if 0' in interbench.c
to '#if 1' to enable the affinity support to be built in. The function on
x86_64 for those very keen does not have the sizeof argument.


So how does -ck perform? As much as I'd like to say it was a walkover I
have  to admit you need to squint hard to be convinced that -ck is better
overall.  Both mainline and -ck perform better in different load settings:

The SCHED_NORMAL nice 0 runs are as below, performed on a pentium M 1.7Ghz:

Benchmarking kernel 2.6.13-rc1 with datestamp 200507121411

--- Benchmarking Audio in the presence of loads ---
	Latency +/- SD (ms)  Max Latency   % Desired CPU  % Deadlines Met
None	  0.003 +/- 0          0.005		 100	        100
Video	   1.02 +/- 0.487       1.68		 100	        100
X	   1.32 +/- 2.22          10		 100	        100
Burn	  0.518 +/- 306004        52		 100	         99
Write	  0.031 +/- 0.209       2.58		 100	        100
Read	  0.006 +/- 0.00173     0.01		 100	        100
Compile	   4.59 +/- 5.74         426		96.5	         94
Memload	  0.021 +/- 0.0697     0.659		 100	        100

--- Benchmarking Video in the presence of loads ---
	Latency +/- SD (ms)  Max Latency   % Desired CPU  % Deadlines Met
None	  0.003 +/- 0          0.005		 100	        100
X	   3.27 +/- 3.2         41.3		88.8	       77.7
Burn	  0.003 +/- 0.001      0.005		 100	        100
Write	  0.151 +/- 0.67          50		99.5	         99
Read	  0.004 +/- 0.00173    0.037		 100	        100
Compile	  0.025 +/- 0.248       4.81		 100	        100
Memload	  0.018 +/- 0.0572     0.715		 100	        100

--- Benchmarking X in the presence of loads ---
	Latency +/- SD (ms)  Max Latency   % Desired CPU  % Deadlines Met
None	  0.009 +/- 0.0966         1		 100	         99
Video	   4.46 +/- 4.43         572		91.9	         66
Burn	   1.58 +/- 1.58         156		 100	         98
Write	  0.002 +/- 0.0237         4		 100	         98
Read	  0.008 +/- 0.0797        15		 100	         96
Compile	  0.009 +/- 0.0896         2		 100	         99
Memload	  0.108 +/- 0.13          10		 100	         98


Benchmarking kernel 2.6.12-rc6-ck1 with datestamp 200507121345

--- Benchmarking Audio in the presence of loads ---
	Latency +/- SD (ms)  Max Latency   % Desired CPU  % Deadlines Met
None	  0.003 +/- 0          0.005		 100	        100
Video	  0.003 +/- 0          0.004		 100	        100
X	   2.53 +/- 3.01          11		 100	        100
Burn	  0.294 +/- 1.47          11		 100	        100
Write	  0.025 +/- 0.116       1.02		 100	        100
Read	  0.007 +/- 0.001       0.01		 100	        100
Compile	  0.393 +/- 1.68          11		 100	        100
Memload	  0.095 +/- 0.545          6		 100	        100

--- Benchmarking Video in the presence of loads ---
	Latency +/- SD (ms)  Max Latency   % Desired CPU  % Deadlines Met
None	  0.003 +/- 0.00245    0.052		 100	        100
X	   3.57 +/- 3.21        22.7		95.7	       91.3
Burn	  0.837 +/- 2.49          50		97.7	       95.5
Write	  0.094 +/- 0.596       16.7		 100	       99.8
Read	  0.005 +/- 0.00872    0.169		 100	        100
Compile	  0.543 +/- 1.91        33.3		98.8	       97.7
Memload	   0.21 +/- 0.836       16.7		99.7	       99.3

--- Benchmarking X in the presence of loads ---
	Latency +/- SD (ms)  Max Latency   % Desired CPU  % Deadlines Met
None	  0.009 +/- 0.0964         1		 100	         99
Video	   2.31 +/- 2.27         754		90.9	         65
Burn	  0.129 +/- 0.151         12		 100	         98
Write	  0.069 +/- 0.112          6		 100	         98
Read	  0.009 +/- 0.0896         1		 100	         99
Compile	  0.039 +/- 0.102          3		 100	         98
Memload	  0.004 +/- 0.0408         1		 100	         99


The full logs are available here (including niced runs and real time
runs): http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/interbench/2.6.13-rc1.log
http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/interbench/2.6.12-rc6-ck1.log

Thanks:
For help from Zwane Mwaikambo, Bert Hubert, Seth Arnold, Rik Van Riel,  
Nicholas Miell and John Levon. Aggelos Economopoulos for contest code, and
Bob Matthews for irman (mem_load) code.

This was quite some time in the making... I realise there's so much more
that  could be done trying to simulate the interactive tasks and the
loads, but  this is a start, it's quite standardised and the results are
reproducible.  Adding more code to simulate loads and threads to benchmark
is quite easy if  someone wishes to suggest or code up something I'm all
ears. Of course  bugfixes, comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Cheers,
Con Kolivas
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