language: en

[USENIX Summer Conference June 11-15, 1990 Anaheim, California]

Why Aren't Operating Systems Getting Faster As Fast as Hardware?

John K. Ousterhout
University of California at Berkeley

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates several hardware platforms and operating systems using a set of benchmarks that stress kernel entry/exit, file systems, and other things related to operating systems. The overall conclusion is that operating system performance is not improving at the same rate as the base speed of the underlying hardware. The most obvious ways to remedy this situation are to improve memory bandwidth and reduce operating systems' tendency to wait for disk operations to complete.

1. Introduction