Comparisons of Distributed Operating System Performance Using the WPI Benchmark Suite

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute Mach Research Group has developed a series of benchmark programs, the WPI Benchmark Suite (WBS), designed to evaluate the performance of Unix-like operating systems. This paper presents performance results produced by running programs from the WBS on HP 386 PCs, HP 486 PCs, and Sun 3/60 workstations. The analysis of these benchmark runs includes comparisons of Mach 2.5, Mach 3.0, and SUNOS 4.1.1 running on identical hardware platforms. The focus of this paper is distributed benchmarks designed to evaluate the e ectiveness of di erent operating system mechanisms for distributed applications. The results identify strengths and weaknesses in the Mach 2.5 and Mach 3.0 operating systems. Worcester Polytechnic Institute Technical Report WPI-CS-TR-92-2 This research was supported by a grant from the Research Institute of the Open Software Foundation.