From: friedman@starbase.trincoll.edu (Mark A. Friedman) Subject: Performance Enhanced or Worsened by Cache Addition? On Zeos 486DX2-66 system? Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 04:59:07 GMT
On some PC-Clone systems, when running some versions of Unix, users
have found that performance actually increases after disabling the
hardware cache perhaps because the cacheing algorithm in the kernel
was better tuned to Unix access than the hardware cacheing algorithms.
Can anyone argue through an understanding of Linux's kernel and
hardware cacheing, or through experience, or best yet actual
measurements whether the performance of Linux with X, and say GNU
programs such as emacs and gcc increases or decreases with the
addition of a hardware cache?
In particular, I'd be interested in knowing if any Zeos 486DX2-66
system users have measured/experienced their systems running Linux
with and without the 128K and 256K hardware caches and experie nced a
significant difference in performance in either direction.
I am trying to decide whether to purchase a 128K cache upgrade to go
with a system with 16M RAM.
Thanks,
-- Mark