Benchmarking The Linux 2.6.24 Through 2.6.29 Kernels

There is not much to say about the GnuPG file encryption performance on the recent Linux kernels.

The Linux 2.6.29 kernel really shines with OpenSSL and its RSA 4096-bit performance. The number of signs per second had doubled! In the Linux 2.6.24, 2.6.25, 2.6.26, 2.6.27, and 2.6.28 kernel releases, the number of signs per second was at 31. With the newest Linux kernel, it jumped to 62 signs per second. When repeating the tests, sure enough, at least with this Intel Core 2 Duo system there was a tremendous gain using the Linux 2.6.29 kernel.

When it came to the SQLite performance, a serious performance regression began with the Linux 2.6.26 kernel and ended with the Linux 2.6.29 release. Normally it required 27~28 seconds to perform 12,500 database insertions using SQLite, but with the Linux 2.6.26 through 2.6.28 kernel releases it took 109 seconds! Fortunately, this regression is now fixed. This is quite important considering SQLite is used by Mozilla Firefox, Adobe, and many other desktop applications.