Random data for the day: Dave Pigott has installed some new PandaBoard build machines in the validation lab. They're identical to mine except that root is on USB Flash instead of NFS, and they have a much faster flash drive for the build area.
The time taken to bootstrap and test gcc-linaro-2011.09 with C, C++, Fortran, and LTO is: * ursa3, ursa4 (Toshiba USB stick): 301 minutes build / 369 test * ursa2 (no-name USB stick): 324 minutes build / 422 test * tcpanda (fast USB stick): 274 minutes build / 265 test
So the new combo gives a 1.38 x faster build. I'm surprised as I though the build was CPU bound. I'd hate to see what building on an SD card is like.
Note that /tmp is in RAM, /scratch is ext4, the new boards use noatime, and the kernel doesn't have the new USB performance fix.
-- Michael