prelink performance gains

[Miloslav Trmač]

Hello,
On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Dhiru Kholia <dhiru.kholia at gmail.com> wrote:
> - Here are some measurements (for LibreOffice [2] loading time in
>   seconds) done using the "unSPEC" benchmarking suite. These numbers
>   are repeatable and you are encouraged to try "unSPEC" to do
>   independent validation of these numbers.
>
>   - hkario (modern SSD based system, cache flushed): (1.816, 1.811, 1.797,
>     1.827 with prelink), (2.034, 2.042, 2.027, 2.016 without prelink)
(mean 1.813, stdev 0.01245) vs. (mean 2.03, stdev 0.01103) with 4
samples is not statistically significant[1] even though the difference
leaps to the eye:  So more samples would be required to draw a
conclusion.

(Verification would be welcome: It's been years since my statistics course.)

>   - halfie (T430s): (10.725, 10.095, 10.378, 10.568 with prelink), (8.901,
>     8.993, 9.075, 9.448, 9.489 without prelink)

This doesn't make sense with what I know about prelink.   Yet, similar
data have been measured earlier, and IIRC there wasn't any alternative
explanation for the result.  (One plausible explanation is that "what
I know about prelink" is wrong, of course.)
    Mirek

[1] http://www.quantitativeskills.com/sisa/statistics/t-test.php?mean1=1.813&mean2=2.03&N1=4&N2=4&SD1=0.01245&SD2=0.01103&CI=95&CIplus=true&Submit1=Calculate