Hidden bundled UNIX benchmarking software

Jan 13, '02 04:53:43AM

Contributed by: Gwyrrdin

I was somewhat bored (Sunday morning) and was reading my news sources, including Stepwise. For months, the install ssh 3.0.2p1 has been on top of the page. And suddenly I wondered which ssh and openssl version I had installed. For checking the version, I typed

% openssl -V
but this didn't give me the version (use 'openssl version' instead), but did give the list of commands as an error message. Suddenly I noticed: speed, so then I typed:
% openssl speed
Openssl performed a full benchmark on the CPU with encrypting and decrypting ... It's not science, but an indication. I think several options influence the benchmark, but on my G4/450 the outcome was:
                  sign    verify    sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.0065s 0.0006s 154.6 1559.8
rsa 1024 bits 0.0385s 0.0021s 26.0 467.0
rsa 2048 bits 0.2581s 0.0080s 3.9 125.7
rsa 4096 bits 1.8383s 0.0291s 0.5 34.3
sign verify sign/s verify/s
dsa 512 bits 0.0062s 0.0078s 160.5 128.5
dsa 1024 bits 0.0214s 0.0260s 46.8 38.5
dsa 2048 bits 0.0759s 0.0944s 13.2 10.6
Read the rest of the article for the results on a G4/350 and a G4/733.

[Editor's note: This speed test is relatively involved; it took a few minutes to run on my G4/733 and spit out much more output than is shown here. If you have a few minutes of free time, 'openssl speed' is an interesting way to fill it!]

On my G4/350 it was looking like this:

                  sign    verify    sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.0084s 0.0008s 119.8 1228.3
rsa 1024 bits 0.0490s 0.0028s 20.4 357.3
rsa 2048 bits 0.3352s 0.0102s 3.0 97.8
rsa 4096 bits 2.3775s 0.0380s 0.4 26.3
sign verify sign/s verify/s
dsa 512 bits 0.0080s 0.0100s 125.2 100.4
dsa 1024 bits 0.0275s 0.0342s 36.3 29.2
dsa 2048 bits 0.0979s 0.1180s 10.2 8.5
Disclaimer: I was running several other applications at the time of testing.

[Editor's note: And here's how it came out on my G4/733, also running a bunch of stuff (including iTunes) at the time of testing:
                 sign    verify    sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.0034s 0.0003s 296.4 3138.9
rsa 1024 bits 0.0197s 0.0011s 50.7 921.5
rsa 2048 bits 0.1306s 0.0039s 7.7 256.8
rsa 4096 bits 0.8850s 0.0140s 1.1 71.4
sign verify sign/s verify/s
dsa 512 bits 0.0032s 0.0039s 313.7 256.1
dsa 1024 bits 0.0109s 0.0126s 91.7 79.4
dsa 2048 bits 0.0373s 0.0456s 26.8 21.9
That was a somewhat interesting diversion :-)]

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