Boosting your Kernel on Gentoo
March 3, 2009
Everybody knows that Gentoo is a performance-architeture-oriented Linux. You can optimize your entire system changing the compiler (gcc) flags to attend the hardware specificities.
Example: I have a Sony VAIO with Intel Core 2 Duo processor, then I can use this flags on my make.conf (I unmasked sys-devel/gcc to use gcc-4.3.3 that have native support to core2 technology)
CFLAGS="-O3 -march=core2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -mfpmath=sse -mmmx -msse -msse2 -msse3 -mssse3"
Then, all binaries in your system will be optimized…but and the kernel ???
Well, when you compile the kernel it uses itself compiler flags. And how to optimize it ?
Good news to you…If you have a Intel processor and use Gentoo Linux in your machine you are a lucky man. You must know the LinuxDNA project. The idea of the project is optimize the kernel to Intel architecture using the icc (Intel Compiler).
Currently, I’m working on Gentoo ebuild to linuxdna package. You’ll have more news about it soon…
March 6, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Awesome news! I’ve been waiting something like this for a long while.
Is there some way to benchmark the performance improvements?
-R
March 6, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Yes, you can use the Linux Benchmark Suite: http://lbs.sourceforge.net/
March 15, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Você coloca a flag -O3 pra otimização da compilação? Os caras do Gent00 não recomendam, certo? Eu sempre acabo usando o -O2, troco otimização por estabilidade.
falow
March 15, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Fala Facina!!! =P
A compilação é feita com o compilador ICC, que é da Intel.
Mas quando você compila com o gcc, as flags de compilação do kernel não são lidas do make.conf =/
Porém, no meu sistema eu compilo com -O3 mesmo, embora, a otimização nem sempre aconteça e os binários ficam muito maiores.