As operating system gains features, performance was overlooked

Linux developers have set up a Linux Kernel Performance Project to halt the operating system's slipping performance.

"The project allows us to do systematic performance evaluations. We ensure that all the dot release have the highest possible performance kernels," Ken Chen a software developer with the Intel Open Source Technology Center, said during a presentation at the LinuxWorld conference in Boston.

As the open source operating system further evolves and features are added, developers inadvertently can affect the system's performance for certain applications, said Chen.

"It is not intentional to cause the regression ,but it is oversight," Chen explained.

Linux performance for Database transactions for instance have dropped by about 6 per cent between Linux kernel version 2.4.18 and the current 2.6.15 version. At times performance has dropped as much as 23 per cent, according to data collected by the project.

Other performance benchmarks too at times have shown a performance decline. Without the peformance project, those drops wouldn't get noticed until after the software was completed.

Developers on average make 2,000 changes to the Linux kernel every month, making it hard to track which change is causing a performance degradation, Cheng explained. By the time the final software version is released, it's difficult to identify which change caused the performance drop.

"Every week we take a snapshot of the Linux development kernel and run benchmarks and look at the results. If there are any performance regressions, it will be a lot easier to identify where they are coming from."

The test lab is headed up by Intel and for now only uses Intel hardware, but Chen said that the project is open to accept hardware donations from other vendors.