> It seems at least the Linux folks optimized the crap out of clone() over the last years. The most essential Linux benchmark is compiling the Linux kernel (si

> It seems at least the Linux folks optimized the crap out of clone() over the last years. The most essential Linux benchmark is compiling the Linux kernel (since it's something the Linux kernel developers do all the time, so they really feel the impact). The clone() system call is used both to create new threads and to create new processes, and the Linux kernel compilation uses a large amount of short-lived processes (each C file is a new C compiler process). It's only natural that clone() is heavily optimized, together with the filesystem caches (each new C compiler process reads the source code files from scratch).