kernbench

Kernbench is a CPU throughput benchmark software originally created and used by Martin J. Bligh. Its primary purpose is to compare kernels on the same machine or to compare hardware. If you want to compare hardware, then you must run kernbench on the same architecture machines (e.g., i386) and run it on the same kernel source tree.

Kernbench operates by running a kernel at various numbers of concurrent jobs with different load variations, namely: 1/2 number of CPUs, optimal (default is 4xnumber of CPUs), and maximal job count. It can also run in single-threaded mode. After the benchmark, it prints out useful statistics for the average of each group of runs.

For this software to be a true throughput benchmark, you need at least 2Gb of RAM, or else you will encounter swapstorms. It is preferable that kernbench is run in single-user mode on a non-journalled filesystem. For results comparison, it should always be run on the same kernel tree.

To use Kernbench, you need a kernel tree (any will do) and the applications 'time' and 'awk' installed. 'Time' is different from the built-in time used by BASH and has more features required for this benchmark. Simply navigate to the kernel tree directory and type /path/to/kernbench.

Kernbench has several options, such as the number of times to perform the benchmark, the number of jobs for optimal run, single-threaded runs, etc. Kernbench has an improved update where it corrects the counting of CPUs and changes the -j option to at least 4GB RAM.

Overall, Kernbench is an excellent software for CPU throughput benchmarking, and if you follow the guidelines listed above, you should expect accurate results.