Integer Test 2: System Bootup Time for IRIX 6.5 and IRIX 6.2

SGI Performance Comparisons

System Bootup Times for IRIX 6.5 and IRIX 6.2

Last Change: 08/May/2008

This test combines integer computations and disk accesses. All systems had 128MB RAM for this test, as they did for the OS installation tests. Remember that these times are for a default installation only.

                          Time to
                        boot up the
                       system (mm:ss)

Indigo2 R10000SC/195 1MB:   1:07
Indy R4400SC/200 1MB:       1:13
Indigo2 R4400SC/250 2MB:    1:25
Indy R5000SC/180 512K:      1:28
Indy R5000PC/150:           1:38
Indy R4600PC/133:           1:38
Indy R4600PC/100:           1:38
O2 R5000SC/200 1MB:         1:54

  Table 5: IRIX 6.5 Bootup Times

For some reason, O2 has always taken longer to bootup than older systems, probably due to the more complex I/O arhcitecture, and thus likely more startup initialisation signals, etc.

Note that because a totally default installation includes a deliberate 10 second delay during bootup while the message concerning 'standalone network mode' is displayed, this 10 seconds is not included in the above times, ie. the /etc/init.d/network file has been edited to change the MSGTIME value to 0. Likewise, for updated versions of 6.5.x, it is a good idea to turn off ESP and any other services not being used; such actions can shorten bootup times by as much as 2 minutes.

Here is the table for IRIX 6.2:

                         Time to
                       boot up the
                      system (mm:ss)

Indy R4400SC/200 1MB:     1:07
Indy R4600PC/133:         1:22
Indy R4600PC/100:         1:22
Indigo2 R4400SC/250 2MB:  1:24

  Table 5b: IRIX 6.2 Bootup Times

Notice that in both cases the Indigo2 R4400SC/250 takes slightly longer than the R4400SC/200 Indy - I expect this is because the Indigo2 has a larger number of internal checks and initialisations to do since it has more internal hardware systems than Indy.