Microsoft Reports OSS Unix Beats Windows XP

Mortimer.CA writes "In a weblog entry, Paul Murphy mentions a Microsoft report (40 page PDF) that in many instances FreeBSD 5.3 and Linux perform better than Windows XP SP2. The report is about MS' Singularity kernel (which does perform better than the OSS kernels by many of the metrics they use), and some future directions in OS design (as well as examination of the way things have been done in the past)." From the post: "What's noteworthy about it is that Microsoft compared Singularity to FreeBSD and Linux as well as Windows/XP - and almost every result shows Windows losing to the two Unix variants. For example, they show the number of CPU cycles needed to "create and start a process" as 1,032,000 for FreeBSD, 719,000 for Linux, and 5,376,000 for Windows/XP."

Too Telling

[teknopagan]

Isn't it telling that the idea of Microsoft telling the truth is considered front page news on /.?

5 Steps of Grieving

[ciroknight]

hmm funny, the last step is Acceptance. Too bad it seems Microsoft skipped the "bargaining" step.

5,376,000 cycles for Windows/XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that including the spyware/worm/rootkit overhead?

Re:Singularity is truly an intriguing system.

[Guysmiley777]

In twenty or so years we may look back at Microsoft Research with the same admiration we have for Bell Labs.

I just shot soda out of my nose. You owe me a keyboard.

You're SO fired!

[Kevin Burtch]

I bet the person who put that report on MS's site has been drooling over the severance package... ;-)

Re:44 pages and the main question is still unanswe

[teknopagan]

I just have to bow before the guy who can read a 44 page pdf and post an intelligible, coherent comment on it in less than two minutes. I just have to ask - where do you get that kind of caffeine?

Amazing.

Memory Usage?

[ackthpt]

XP sucks memory.

The future: Longhorn will suck far more memory than XP.

They must be in cahoots with the memory makers, alert Rambus!

Re:premature optimization

[Anonymous Coward]

see which takes longer

Is "searching the manpages" included in the benchmark time?

*Ducks*

Strangely enough, 5,376,000

[Anonymous Coward]

is also the number of cycles needed to crash a process.

Wohoo!

[AlXtreme]

Finally a proper microkernel OS design by Microsoft! prof Tanenbaum would be proud!

Come on, who cares about statistics? I'm glad they're actually doing something useful: CS research!

Oh wait, this is /.: Die M$ XP, DIE! *pinky to mouth*

Re:Give me a fucking break

[Anonymous Coward]

Any programmer who knows anything about Unix and Windows will tell you that threads are cheaper in Windows and processes are cheaper in Unix, because that's how they were designed.

You, sir, actually know something about computers and are not welcome here. Or, at least, please confine your comments to "I bet Steve Ballmer through a chair at teh flying spagetti monstar!!!!" and the like.

not caffeine...

[conJunk]

he gets it right here [slashdot.org]

Win/XP, MacOS/X, WhatThe/Heck?

[danaris]

Entirely OT, I know, but...

Why is it that some people seem to think that all OS names, when they have a qualifier of some kind attached to the generic term, need a slash to separate them? Just because GNU/Linux is written that way does not mean it's some kind of law, people...

It's Windows XP. That's WINDOWS {SPACE} XP. And Mac OS X. Spaces. No slashes.

...

I don't know why I even bother...

Dan Aris

Umm... yeah, sure... but...

[Colin Smith]

I bet you don't get a dancing paperclip with Linux, do you?

 

Creating and starting a process?

[Anonymous Coward]

...For example, they show the number of CPU cycles needed to "create and start a process" as 1,032,000 for FreeBSD, 719,000 for Linux, and 5,376,000 for Windows/XP.

That's about as useful a metric as total elapsed urination time.

What's the real delta?