Performance of various compressors

I started rolling a tool to measure various aspects of git performance. 
I will start looking at merge next, and at workloads different from the 
kernel (gcc4 anyone?) ...

The only data points worth sharing a this point are:

That doing the compression at a level of 3, rather than the max of 9, 
cuts the cpu time required for a big git commit by over half, and that 
that actually translates into a win on the I/O to disk. (these tests 
were performed on a dual opteron 842)

The benefits of compression aren't very much for git right now.

And: A big git commit is I/O bound. But we knew that. Maybe it's 
possible to make it less I/O bound.

Git branch: 7a4c67965de68ae7bc7aa1fde33f8eb9d8114697
Tree: 2.6.11.7 source tree
Branch: N/a
Merge File: N/a
HW: dual opteron 242
Mem: 1GB
Disk: seagate barracuda
Filesystem: Reiser3
Git add: N/a
Cache: Hot
Git Commit: 44.97user 5.94system 1:45.24elapsed 48%CPU
Git Merge:
Options:
Feature: Test of compression=9 (std git)

du -s .git/objects  110106  # du is probably not the right thing
du -s --apparent-size .git/objects 58979

Git branch: 9e272677621c91784cf2533123a41745178f0701
Tree: 2.6.11.7 source tree
Branch: N/a
Merge File: N/a
HW: dual opteron 242
Mem: 1GB
Disk: seagate barracuda
Disk mode: udma5
Filesystem: Reiser3
Git add: N/a
Cache: Hot
Git Commit: 16.79user 6.15system 1:21.92elapsed 28%CPU
Git Merge:
Options:
Feature: Test of compression=3 (std git)

du -s .git/objects  115218
du -s --apparent-size .git/objects 64274

There's some variety in the best/worst case timings for I/O for the 
compressor=3 case...

16.79user 6.15system 1:21.92elapsed 28%CPU
16.68user 5.71system 1:13.19elapsed 30%CPU
-- 

Mike Taht


lastly -

Timings of git commit with tmpfs (note, these were done with an ancient, 
5 hour old version of git and the script)

Hot cache, tmpfs .git compression=9
44.97user 2.76system 0:47.72elapsed 100%CPU

Hot cache, tmpfs .git, compression=6
Wed Apr 20 20:18:11 PDT 2005
23.55user 2.83system 0:26.36elapsed 100%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 
0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+568680minor)pagefaults 0swaps
109620  .git/objects
58618   .git/objects