6 ms·
So WHY is Windows slower? What effect can OS conceivably have on CPU benchmarks? Off the top of my head I can think of preemptive multitasking and memory alloc
by the_grue 8y ago
So WHY is Windows slower? What effect can OS conceivably have on CPU benchmarks? Off the top of my head I can think of preemptive multitasking and memory allocation implementations (the latter shouldn't influence pure CPU benchmarks much, but it can influence 7-Zip results), any better guesses?
- ygra 8y agoI wonder whether Windows Server SKUs do differently, perhaps due to different scheduler optimization choices.
- dogma1138 8y agoThere is no difference, in fact they might be slower as they are on older kernels.
- magicalhippo 8y agoScheduling threads is probably a big one I imagine. If Windows schedules two threads from the same process working on a shared dataset across two different NUMA nodes then memory latency can shoot up, from what I understand. I've also noticed that Windows is very fond of passing hard-working threads around all the cores in turn, rather than letting them hog certain cores. Pretty sure that doesn't improve cache behavior etc.
- swebs 8y agoThere was a very good post about that a few years ago. It probably doesn't explain this specific case, but it is a fascinating read nonetheless. >I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other Operating Systems. Here Is Why http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w...
- the_grue 8y agoThanks, that's really interesting, even though the author toned much of his initial satire down in a later update.
- Someguywhatever 8y agoTheres also the burden on Microsoft that nothing can break. Meaning: anything that used to work before (in an earlier incarnation of Windows) must continue to work in later versions. I don't think Linux has this burden. They are more free to break stuff and so more free to innovate.
- the_grue 8y agoI'm quite sure Linux has the same burden. Here is what Linus Torvalds has to say: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75
- coinerone 8y agoIn Linux Kernel development there is one realy important Rule: Don't break Userspace! Its like the Windows burden you mentioned, but much more reasonable imho.
- stefs 8y agocuriously, nowadays (i.e. the article/original comment is from 2013) some google employees voice similar criticism about their own engineering culture: building new things are rewarded, maintaining an old thing is not.
- rbanffy 8y agoThis deserves its own post.
- AtomicOrbital 8y agoit had one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5688151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5688151
- stinos 8y agoCombination of things (which probably also explains why some distros are good at one becnhmark but less good at others)? Scheduler, no architecture-specific kernel code etc. Plus it's never just the OS: there's always platform-specific source code and the compiler.. Non-optimal optimization options for the latter and you're screwed as well.
- nolok 8y agoYou're running dozens of threads over 16+ cores who don't all have the same properties to access and share memory (speed, invalidation, permission, ...). The OS is in charge of deciding who runs where, and who shares a core with who. So ... A lot.
- rasz 8y agoIt might be blindly applying all the Intel brokeness (spectre/meltdown) patches to AMD cpu.