I was investigating the transfer performance of a USB HDD in Linux and stumbled across a news thread talking about the performance difference in compression prior to a transfer, against transferring the (larger) uncompressed file.

Oh by the way, performance of USB HDD transfers is bad due to no DMA = CPU spikes during the transfer...the faster CPU you have, the better performance you'll get (I get about 5MB/s on a 1GHz Via Nehmiah before it pegs out).

It looks like some systems admins got involved in the thread though, so it became quite humorous :)


Post #176448
By pwhysall
1. What's the fastest compression program? I'm willing to bet that gzip isn't it. this [*] may warrant investigation - I'm going to have a play!
2. Is your gzip appropriately compiled for AMD64, or is it a generic i386 binary?
3. Your Quad Opteron would be much happier in my house. Ship it to me right away!


Post #176458
By broomberg
but it seems the increase in size will bite you more when moving things over a T1.

I'll let you know later. Gotta go setup a new array and more some data.

Note: I disagree. I think the quad opteron is much more happier in my safe, cool, raised floor, generator backup power, 24 x 7 attended, Gbit backbone, 31TB SAN attached, LTO2 backed up, halon workalike protected, 10mbit ethernet internet connected computer room than it could ever possibly be in your house.

And it would get lonely without all the other quad opterons to keep it company.
Oh, you thought it was the only one? nonononono.
That was the 1st box to prove it out. We are standardizing on them for our high end high io compute needs. They will replace the Sun 450s.