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Comment by allertonm | Hacker News Reader

Compiling the linux kernel seems like a poor choice of test, since it is not a pure CPU activity and will perform a significant amount of I/O.

In addition, it doesn't seem like compiling the linux kernel requires very much RAM, so you get the most bang for your buck using a CS VM with only 256MB and the cost only goes up from there as you add more RAM that the test cannot benefit from.

(Edit: I would love whoever downmodded me to explain why I am wrong.)

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its a decent enough test, mostly because most geeks out there have done it themselves, so you can get a good 'feel' for a machine by knowing how long it takes to compile the kernel.

its not perfect, and yeah, its kinda a geeky-benchmark, but it doesn't make it an invalid benchmark, as long as it was conducted correctly.

I consider myself a geek (and most of my friends would agree) but it's been 15 years since I last compiled the Linux kernel :)

That said, I wouldn't rule it out as a test because of that, but I do think that if you are going to compare 4 different RAM sizes of CS instances, and compare the costs of doing a job using those different sizes then you need to pick a job that is going to make use of the RAM. You can see from the results that there is a small (time) benefit moving from 256 to 512MB (but not enough to offset the increased costs) and virtually none above that.

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