SYNOPSIS

lat_pipe [ -P <parallelism> ] [ -W <warmups> ] [ -N <repetitions> ]

DESCRIPTION

lat_pipe uses two processes communicating through a Unix pipe to measure interprocess communication latencies. The benchmark passes a token back and forth between the two processes (this sort of benchmark is frequently referred to as a ``hot potato'' benchmark). No other work is done in the processes.

OUTPUT

The reported time is in microseconds per round trip and includes the total time, i.e., the context switching overhead is includeded. Output format is like so

Pipe latency: 491 microseconds

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Funding for the development of this tool was provided by Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation.

AUTHOR

Carl Staelin and Larry McVoy

Comments, suggestions, and bug reports are always welcome.