28.3. Speed of Process Creation

Table 28-3 shows some speed comparisons for different methods of process creation. The results were obtained using a test program that executed a loop that repeatedly created a child process and then waited for it to terminate. The table compares the various methods using three different process memory sizes, as indicated by the Total virtual memory value. The differences in memory size were simulated by having the program malloc() additional memory on the heap prior to performing the timings.

Note:

Values for process size (Total virtual memory) in Table 28-3 are taken from the VSZ value displayed by the command ps -o “pid vsz cmd”.