[kaffe] Benchmarking kaffe using Ashes

[Dalibor Topic]

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Hi,

attached you'll find my attempt at writing a FAQ entry
for using the Ashes benchmark suite to test the
performance of kaffe. I hope this helps people without
access to (or need for) SPEC JVM 98 evaluate kaffe's
performance better, and helps us get more reproducible
numbers for decisions regarding performance. Of
course, if someone could put up a nightly performance
test server that fires off a mail to me with the
results, I'd be very happy ;)

best regards,

dalibor topic

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Benchmarking Kaffe using Ashes
==============================
Author: Dalibor Topic <robilad@yahoo.com>

Introduction
============

Q: What is Ashes ?

A: Ashes is a freely redistributable collection of Java benchmarks and
shell scripts. 

Q: Where can I get it ?

A: Ashes is available for download at:
http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/software

Installation
============

You'll need to download ashesBase-21Mar2000.tar.gz and
ashesSuiteCollection.tar.gz and unpack them in a directory.

Then you need to set a few environment variables. How you set
environment variables depends on your shell. It's export VAR=value in
bash. Use absolute paths because some Ashes scripts will fail when you
use relative paths.

ASHES_SUITE_COLLECTION=/absolute-path-to/ashesSuiteCollection
CLASSPATH=/absolute-path-to/ashesBase/classes/
ASHES_JDK_CLASSES=/abolute-path-to-installed/kaffe/jre/rt
ASHES_PDS=:
PATH=$PATH:/absolute-path-to/ashesBase/bin

Read the file index.html in the ashesBase directory for more
information on installing and using Ashes.

Benchmarking
============

Before you start, you need to make sure that the java command actually
invokes kaffe on your system. If it doesn't, set

PATH=/absolute-path-to-installed/kaffe/bin:$PATH

You need to copy a benchmark from the Ashes suite collection to the
current directory first. I'll use achesEasyTestSuite in this
example. Look into ashesSuiteCollection/suites for more test suites.

refreshSuite ashesEasyTestSuite

You should have an ashesEasyTestSuite directory in your current
directory now.

applyCmdOnSuite executeBenchmark ashesEasyTestSuite

runs each benchmark exactly once. You can check if your checkout works
that way. You should not get any 

*** Warning: Benchmark ran incorrectly! ***

messages. If you do, please make sure that java invokes kaffe.  java
-fullversion will give you information on kaffe.

Now that you've got the benchmark set up, you can do some real
benchmarking. timeBenchmark runs a benchmark ten times and prints the
results.

applyCmdOnSuite timeBenchmark ashesEasyTestSuite > results.txt

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