Mag Gam on 6 Dec 2010 05:27:16 -0800


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[PLUG] recompiling a kernel for performance


Hello All,

At our university lab we have close to 50 Redhat 5.2 servers. Each of
them with 8, 16, and some with 24 cores. Most have 64GB and some with
126GB of memory. These servers are mainly used for simulations. A
simulation may consist of a Octave, Python, R, and MATLAB process
which reads data and generates data. Each process can take 60 mins to
70 hours. I am sure there are other tuning we can do such as -- tune
I/O subsystem, tune network, etc...

Assuming all the 'low bearing fruit' have been picked would
recompiling with the latest 2.3.36 kernel help in computing speed?
Some features  interesting are:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=e22bee782b3b00bd4534ae9b1c5fb2e8e6573c5c
(workqueue: implement concurrency managed dynamic worker pool)

To summarize, here are some new enhancements for 2.3.26
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/What-s-new-in-Linux-2-6-36-1103009.html?page=6

Also, are there any settings in the kernel I can set to enhance
performance -- According to redhat you should stick with their build
:-/
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