Kernbench Review

Kernel and Hardware Benchmarking Utility

by Jordan Emmorey

v0.1 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

0. TOC and Purpose
1. Installation
2. Use
3. Resources
4. Resources
5. Contact
6. Keywords
7. Disclaimer

0. TOC and Purpose

The purpose of this is paper is to review kernbench the cpu throughput benchmark utility.

1. Installation

Installation was simple.  The tar ball I downloaded from kernel.org had the requisite shell script to run kernbench.

2. Use

To use kernbench you need to download kernel source.  You can get this from kernel.org, and while testing you should use the same source version each time.  This will provide results which can be compared with better accuracy.

You have to run kernbench from the root of the untarred source directory.  Pay attention to the output of kernbench it will make suggestions for which flags to use based on available memory.  Seem example below:

souljah@bluepunx:/usr/src/linux-2.6.32$ ~/kernbench-0.50/kernbench -M
2 cpus found
Cleaning source tree...
Caching kernel source in ram...
No old config found, using allnoconfig
Making mrproper
Making allnoconfig...
Half load is no greater than single; disabling
Kernel 2.6.31-16-generic
Performing 5 runs of
make -j 2

All data logged to kernbench.log
Warmup run...
Optimal load -j 2 run number 1...
Optimal load -j 2 run number 2...
Optimal load -j 2 run number 3...
Optimal load -j 2 run number 4...
Optimal load -j 2 run number 5...
Average Optimal load -j 2 Run (std deviation):
Elapsed Time 76.958 (0.339293)
User Time 121.696 (0.12341)
System Time 14.902 (0.085557)
Percent CPU 176.8 (0.83666)
Context Switches 11773.4 (44.0034)
Sleeps 9928 (56.2228)

3. Assessment

The ouput from kernbench provides insight into the hardware and kernel, but requires multiple runs to garner any relative data for comparison.  I would like to see a repository for kernbench results for comparison without multiple runs.  I would also like to see more verbose output with hardware information in the results.

4. Resources

• Freshmeat.net Home for kernbench
• kernbench Source

5. Contact

Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, suggestions or gripes please feel free to send them along. I'm always hungry for feedback. Thanks. Contact me via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

6. Keywords

Benchmark, Linux, Ubuntu, Kernel, Hardware, Benchmarking, Freshmeat, kernel.org

7. Disclaimer

Obsecurities is furnishing this item "as is". Obsecurities does not provide any warranty of the item whatsoever, whether express, implied, or statutory, including, but not limited to, any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or any warranty that the contents of the item will be error-free.