Performance - SPEC Kenbus Results


The SPEC KENBUS workload (officially known as 060.kenbus) models a program development, application execution environment. The workload is characterized by high-frequency UNIX command execution, notably compiler functions, binary executables, and text processing facilities. The workload "users", called clones, utilize a think-time, which requires a higher level of concurrent multiuser load to achieve processor saturation than for the SDET workload. The workload places significant demands on the memory management systems, simply because more clones must be allocated to fully saturate a system.

The locking, memory management and time sharing improvements made in the A+Edition have significantly improved the performance of the KENBUS benchmark, especially in the larger MP systems. The throughput results indicate that the A+Edition provides substantial performance improvements over both Solaris 2.3 and Solaris 2.4 for large MP servers running heavy UNIX user workloads.

The MP throughput results indicate that for the KENBUS benchmark, the A+Edition provides improved performance as additional CPUs are added to the system. This is especially apparent in Release 1.1 where the improvements in base Solaris 2.4 and the enhancements of the A+Edition produce an highly scalable system.