[yocto] Build time data

[Osier-mixon, Jeffrey]

Excellent topic for a wiki page.

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:30 PM, Darren Hart <dvhart at linux.intel.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 04/11/2012 01:42 PM, Chris Tapp wrote:
>> Is there a page somewhere that gives a rough idea of how quickly a full build runs on various systems?
>>
>> I need a faster build platform, but want to get a reasonable price / performance balance ;-)
>>
>> I'm looking at something like an i7-2700K but am not yet tied...
>>
>
>
> We really do need to get some pages up on this as it comes up a lot.
>
> Currently Yocto Project builds scale well up to about 12 Cores, so first
> step is to get as many cores as you can. Sacrifice some speed for cores
> if you have to. If you can do dual-socket, do it. If not, try for a six
> core.
>
> Next up is storage. We read and write a LOT of data. SSDs are one way to
> go, but we've been known to chew through them and they aren't priced as
> consumables. You can get about 66% of the performance of a single SSD
> with a pair of good quality SATA2 or better drives configured in RAID0
> (no redundancy). Ideally, you would have your OS and sources on an SSD
> and use a RAID0 array to build on. This data is all recreatable, so it's
> "OK" if you lose a disk and therefor ALL of your build data.
>
> Now RAM, you will want about 2 GB of RAM per core, with a minimum of 4GB.
>
> Finally, software. Be sure to run a "server" kernel which is optimized
> for throughput as opposed to interactivity (like Desktop kernels). This
> implies CONFIG_PREEMPT_NONE=y. You'll want a 64-bit kernel to avoid the
> performance penalty inherent with 32bit PAE kernels - and you will want
> lots of memory. You can save some IO by mounting your
> its-ok-if-i-lose-all-my-data build partition as follows:
>
> /dev/md0        /build          ext4
> noauto,noatime,nodiratime,commit=6000
>
> As well as drop the journal from it when you format it. Just don't power
> off your machine without properly shutting down!
>
> That should get you some pretty good build times.
>
> I run on a beast with 12 cores, 48GB of RAM, OS and sources on a G2
> Intel SSD, with two Seagate Barracudas in a RAID0 array for my /build
> partition. I run a headless Ubuntu 11.10 (x86_64) installation running
> the 3.0.0-16-server kernel. I can build core-image-minimal in < 30
> minutes and core-image-sato in < 50 minutes from scratch.
>
> Hopefully that gives you some ideas to get started.
>
> --
> Darren Hart
> Intel Open Source Technology Center
> Yocto Project - Linux Kernel
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-- 
Jeff Osier-Mixon http://jefro.net/blog
Yocto Project Community Manager @Intel http://yoctoproject.org