"0 tinyBenchmarks" results

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Wed Aug 9 05:38:23 UTC 2006


Michael Haupt wrote:
> could someone please give me some insight on the meanings of the
> results obtained from running "0 tinyBenchmarks"?

tinyBenchmarks are micro-benchmarks measuring the speed of bytecode 
execution and message sending. They have no meaning other than to 
compare VMs, e.g., it is not valid to make any larger claims from 
certain results of tinyBenchmarks.

> It reports results for bytecodes per second, and for sends per second.
> Those should, if I understand that correctly, correlate in that a
> larger bc/sec value should imply a larger sends/sec value.

Usually, yes this is the case. However...

> That is not the case; for example, I have obtained the following
> (format: [bc/sec, sends/sec]):
> 
> [20565552,1355113]
> [20901371,1352909]
> 
> Apparently, the bytecodes/sec rate is larger in the second result, but
> the sends/sec rate is about the same.

... these results are *way* too close to be able to compare them. 
Benchmarks results vary based on load of the machine and just having 
your email client check for mail in the background, or some memory 
swapping would perfectly explain the differences you see in the above.

Cheers,
   - Andreas




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