cpu_rate
by
Robert G. Brown
Duke University Physics Department
Durham, NC 27708-0305
Copyright Robert G. Brown, 2025
Abstract
This is the current snapshot of the cpu_rate
Microtimer harness and microbenchmark program. I use this
program to do quick-and-dirty benchmarks of a variety of systems
performance parameters. The timing harness itself is at least modestly
advanced -- it uses the CPU cycle counter instead of gettimeofday where
possible, for example (on all post-Pentium Intels, post-Athlon AMDs).
There are tests for memory performance, "arithmetic" performance,
transcendental (savage benchmark) performance. In many cases
(specifically those involving vectors and memory) the size of the
vectors can be varied and the effects of cache size and hierarchical
memory explored.
This version of the code supports the relatively simple and
"object-like" addition of code fragments to be timed. There is a
fairly long list of operations and fragments it already times (enter
"cpu_rate -l" to get a current list). It is in beta mode and
may have bugs. There may well be better timers out there (e.g.
lmbench) only perhaps. not so easy to use.
Because of the nature of this program I recommend that you grab the
tarball and work with it rather than simply build/install either the
source rpm or the provided (RH 9) binary rpm. The latter "should work",
but part of the fun of a benchmark/timer is playing with build options
and seeing how it works. There are also some (probably broken in the
current release) scripts in the source directory that in previous
versions scanned e.g. across the -s size option for the vector
benchmarks; these scripts, with a bit of repair, would make it pretty
easy to generate a graphable file of e.g. stream or memory read/write
with and without random shuffling.
I hope that you find cpu_rate useful.
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Note, Robert G. Brown is generally either rgb or rgbatduke on many external
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