Re: SMP performance degradation with sysbench

From: Nick Piggin
Date: Mon Feb 26 2007 - 08:42:01 EST


Nick Piggin wrote:
Rik van Riel wrote:

Lorenzo Allegrucci wrote:

Hi lkml,

according to the test below (sysbench) Linux seems to have scalability
problems beyond 8 client threads:
http://jeffr-tech.livejournal.com/6268.html#cutid1
http://jeffr-tech.livejournal.com/5705.html
Hardware is an 8-core amd64 system and jeffr seems willing to try more
Linux versions on that machine.
Anyway, is there anyone who can reproduce this?



I have reproduced it on a quad core test system.

With 4 threads (on 4 cores) I get a high throughput, with
approximately 58% user time and 42% system time.

With 8 threads (on 4 cores) I get way lower throughput,
with 37% user time, 29% system time 35% idle time!

The maximum time taken per query also increases from
0.0096s to 0.5273s. Ouch!

I don't know if this is MySQL, glibc or Linux kernel,
but something strange is going on...


Like you, I'm also seeing idle time start going up as threads increase.

I initially thought this was a problem with the multiprocessor scheduler,
because the pattern is exactly like some artificat in the load balancing.

"artificat"

Wow. I must need some sleep :) Please excuse any other typos!

--
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
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