lmbench: Portable Tools for Performance Analysis

lmbench is a micro-benchmark suite designed to focus attention on the basic building blocks of many common system applications, such as databases, simulations, software development, and networking. In almost all cases, the individual tests are the result of analysis and isolation of a customer's actual performance problem. These tools can be, and currently are, used to compare different system implementations from different vendors. In several cases, the benchmarks have uncovered previously unknown bugs and design flaws. The results have shown a strong correlation between memory system performance and overall performance. lmbench includes an extensible database of results from systems current as of late 1995. 1. Introduction lmbench provides a suite of benchmarks that attempt to measure the most commonly found performance bottlenecks in a wide range of system applications. These bottlenecks have been identified, isolated, and reproduced in a set of small microbenchmarks, which measur...