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Doesn't Alpine have a noticeable performance penalty due to being based on musl libc instead of glibc? This seems to be born out in multiple people's micro ben

Doesn't Alpine have a noticeable performance penalty due to being based on musl libc instead of glibc? This seems to be born out in multiple people's micro benchmarks though how much of an issue it is for larger applications probably depends on the workload. https://superuser.com/questions/1219609/why-is-the-alpine-docker-image-over-50-slower-than-the-ubuntu-image https://superuser.com/questions/1219609/why-is-the-alpine-do... https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/benchmarking-debian-vs-alpine-as-a-base-docker-image https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/benchmarking-debian-vs-alpine...

ghotli 5y ago
Anecdotal but I work on a performance oriented application and there is no such measured performance penalty from musl. For that particular use-case, like all benchmark caveats. Older musl, perhaps. Musl in other domains that bottleneck on something less performant, perhaps. Ymmv, measure twice cut once. :)
stabbles 5y ago
I've tried alpine's gcc before and it was about 50% slower to compile a bunch of packages. That said, if you compile llvm with MinSize/-Os on glibc distro's it runs 50% slower too, so it's unclear if slowdown is due to musl libc or rather that they optimize for size instead of performance.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Compiling is CPU-bound and doesn't really bottleneck on anything that libc is involved with other than the allocator, so unless musl's allocator is comically slower than glib's, chances are it's just -Os.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    I believe musl’s allocator is known for being pretty poor.
    - ghotli 5y ago
      musl-1.2.1.tar.gz (sig) - August 4, 2020 This release features the new "mallocng" malloc implementation, replacing musl's original dlmalloc-like allocator that suffered from fundamental design problems. https://inbox.vuxu.org/musl/20200518194204.GG21576@brightrain.aerifal.cx/ https://inbox.vuxu.org/musl/20200518194204.GG21576@brightrai... Pretty good writeup from the author https://musl.libc.org/releases.html https://musl.libc.org/releases.html Rest of the detail in the actual changelog is worth reviewing too
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        Sounds like my information is out of date!
  - Johnnynator 5y ago
    This is pretty much -Os. Void Linux provides -O2 builds of GCC for both musl and glibc with a negligible performance difference. I have not benchmarked it lately, but it is clearly below 10%.
throwaway984393 5y ago
I went from an Ubuntu to an Alpine desktop and it was like bolting on a turbo. You know that rush when the turbo spools up and then it just plants you in your seat and you rocket away? Like this wasn't just "I think it's faster", I was like laughing and shouting it was so much faster. It doesn't seem quite as fast now; I feel like I must have added on enough extra software and crap now that it's close to where it was before. But the feeling when bringing up the desktop for the first time was visceral.

ghotli 5y ago

Anecdotal but I work on a performance oriented application and there is no such measured performance penalty from musl. For that particular use-case, like all benchmark caveats. Older musl, perhaps. Musl in other domains that bottleneck on something less performant, perhaps. Ymmv, measure twice cut once. :)

stabbles 5y ago

I've tried alpine's gcc before and it was about 50% slower to compile a bunch of packages. That said, if you compile llvm with MinSize/-Os on glibc distro's it runs 50% slower too, so it's unclear if slowdown is due to musl libc or rather that they optimize for size instead of performance.

marcan_42 5y ago
Compiling is CPU-bound and doesn't really bottleneck on anything that libc is involved with other than the allocator, so unless musl's allocator is comically slower than glib's, chances are it's just -Os.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  I believe musl’s allocator is known for being pretty poor.
  - ghotli 5y ago
    musl-1.2.1.tar.gz (sig) - August 4, 2020 This release features the new "mallocng" malloc implementation, replacing musl's original dlmalloc-like allocator that suffered from fundamental design problems. https://inbox.vuxu.org/musl/20200518194204.GG21576@brightrain.aerifal.cx/ https://inbox.vuxu.org/musl/20200518194204.GG21576@brightrai... Pretty good writeup from the author https://musl.libc.org/releases.html https://musl.libc.org/releases.html Rest of the detail in the actual changelog is worth reviewing too
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      Sounds like my information is out of date!
- Johnnynator 5y ago
  This is pretty much -Os. Void Linux provides -O2 builds of GCC for both musl and glibc with a negligible performance difference. I have not benchmarked it lately, but it is clearly below 10%.

throwaway984393 5y ago

I went from an Ubuntu to an Alpine desktop and it was like bolting on a turbo. You know that rush when the turbo spools up and then it just plants you in your seat and you rocket away? Like this wasn't just "I think it's faster", I was like laughing and shouting it was so much faster. It doesn't seem quite as fast now; I feel like I must have added on enough extra software and crap now that it's close to where it was before. But the feeling when bringing up the desktop for the first time was visceral.