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From: Nicholas N. <nj...@ca...> - 2003-08-14 07:59:14
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On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Daniel Veillard wrote: > It doesn't seems to be an FAQ but I would think it's a common problem. > What are the "best" processors to run Valgrind ? "best" in how do I compare > "usual" valgrind speed w.r.t. CPU architecture and clock speed. > I'm usually fine with a relatively slow processor for development but > Valgrind is changing this. I don't plan to invest too much money, > and I see the choice between Athlon who may have better cache, branch > prediction and memory architecture, versus higher speed clock but relatively > dumb Celeron. > My guts feeling is that for valgrind execution speed is mostly linear > with clock speed, though the branch prediction and cache may have a significant > effect too. So basically is there something else I forgot, and is there > existing Valgrind execution benchmarks for a given "test program" ? > I'm mostly interested in performances of the simple run of valgrind, > cachegrind kind of use is less common. See www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~njn25/pubs/valgrind2003.ps.gz, p16 for results on the SPEC benchmarks on an Athlon. That's the only "official" measurements we have, AFAIK. In general, who can say? Processors are so complex these days, I wouldn't have a clue how Valgrind may differ between eg. P3 vs P4. But you may be right, I could believe that Valgrind doesn't interact well with cache and branch prediction. The only way to get a definitive answer is to get actual measurements. I have a script that can be used for benchmarking the SPEC2000 suite, for those of you who have access to it. If anyone is interested, it's at www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~njn25/valgrind/myrun. Instructions for using it are at the top. > Just wondering, I'm probably not the first one who had that question, AFAIK, no-one else has asked this before. N |