Title :
A performance comparison of Linux and a lightweight kernel
Author :
Brightwell, Ron ; Riesen, Rolf ; Underwood, Keith ; Hudson, Trammell B. ; Bridges, Patrick ; Maccabe, Arthur B.
Author_Institution :
Sandia Nat. Labs., Albuquerque, Mexico
Abstract :
In this paper, we compare running the Linux operating system on the compute nodes of ASCI Red hardware to running a specialized, highly-optimized lightweight kernel (LWK) operating system. We have ported Linux to the compute and service nodes of the ASCI Red supercomputer, and have run several benchmarks. We present performance and scalability results for Linux compared with the LWK environment. To our knowledge, this is the first direct comparison on identical hardware of Linux and an operating system designed specifically for large-scale supercomputers. In addition to presenting these results, we discuss the limitations of both operating systems, in terms of the empirical evidence as well as other important factors.
Keywords :
Unix; network operating systems; operating system kernels; software performance evaluation; workstation clusters; ASCI Red hardware; ASCI Red supercomputer; Linux; computer nodes; highly-optimized lightweight kernel operating system; large-scale supercomputers; Bridges; Hardware; Kernel; Laboratories; Large-scale systems; Linux; Network operating systems; Operating system kernels; Operating systems; Scalability; Software performance; Storms; Supercomputers;
Conference_Titel :
Cluster Computing, 2003. Proceedings. 2003 IEEE International Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2066-9
DOI :
10.1109/CLUSTR.2003.1253322
