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MST-Bench(1)		    General Commands Manual		  MST-Bench(1)

NAME
       MST-Bench - Maximum Sustainable Throughput Benchmark

SYNOPSIS
       mst-bench [--help] [--trials N] [--file-size GiB]

OPTIONS
       --help Print a basic help message

       --trials	N
	      Run N trials and report the average.  The	default	is 3.

       --file-size GiB
	      Use  a file of GiB gibibytes for the disk	tests.	The default is
	      2	* physical memory size,	which is generally enough to overwhelm
	      disk buffering and produce a reasonable estimate of  sustainable
	      throughput.  However, systems with low physical memory may bene-
	      fit  from	large disk cache on the	controller which may result in
	      an overestimate of disk speed.  In  those	 cases,	 specifying  a
	      larger file system may produce more realistic results.

PURPOSE
       MST-Bench  is  a	 simple	 program for reporting the maximum sustainable
       memory and disk throughput one could expect from	 an  optimal  program.
       It does not attempt to report hardware transfer rate (which is not gen-
       erally useful) or estimate performance of real programs.

       The goal	is to provide a	theoretical maximum to which real programs can
       be  compared.   For example, if MST-Bench reports 10 seconds to sequen-
       tially read the generated file, then we know that  10  seconds  is  the
       theoretical best	time that any program can achieve while	streaming this
       file.   If  fgrep  string  bench.tmpfile	 takes	15 seconds, then it is
       achieving about 2/3 of the maximum  theoretical	disk  throughput.   We
       might then investigate whether fgrep's CPU bottleneck can be reduced to
       the point where it can keep up with the disk input.  Once fgrep is run-
       ning  clone to 10 seconds for this file,	we know	that it	cannot be sped
       up much further.

DESCRIPTION
       MST-Bench estimates maximum sustainable throughput for memory and  disk
       under typical circumstances.

       It runs the following speed tests:

       Sequential memory access	for a small array that should result in	a high
       cache hit ratio,	where most accesses are	satisfied by the cache.

       Sequential  memory access for a large array that	should result in a low
       cache hit ratio,	where many accesses are	not satisfied by the cache.

       Sequential disk write of	a file much larger than	 physical  memory,  so
       that  disk  buffering  has a minimal impact and the reported throughput
       represents sustainable speed for	the disk hardware.

       Sequential disk read of a file much larger  than	 physical  memory,  so
       that  disk  buffering  has a minimal impact and the reported throughput
       represents sustainable speed for	the disk hardware.

       Sequential disk rewrite of a file much larger than physical memory,  so
       that  disk  buffering  has a minimal impact and the reported throughput
       represents sustainable speed for	the disk hardware.  In many file  sys-
       tems,  overwriting shows	different performance characteristics than new
       writes.

       Random disk read	of a file much larger than physical  memory,  so  that
       disk  buffering has a minimal impact and	the reported throughput	repre-
       sents sustainable speed for the disk hardware.  The random  read	 reads
       the  same  file as the sequential read, reading every block in the file
       exactly once but	in random order.  This provides	some  idea  about  the
       latency	of  disk access.  Note that dividing the file into more	random
       reads of	smaller	blocks will result in lower performance.

FILES
       bench.tmpfile - file generated in current directory for disk speed test

BUGS
       Please report bugs to the author	and send patches in unified diff  for-
       mat.  (man diff for more	information)

AUTHOR
       J. Bacon

								  MST-Bench(1)

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