CPU benchmarking utility for Linux

Solution 1:

Actually there is a a tool named sysbench.

You can install it with:

sudo apt-get install sysbench

To CPU benchmarking you can do like

sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run

where 20000 is like max event count.

Solution 2:

Alternatively, one can use stress-ng. It has a CPU stress test as one of the many stress tests built into the tool. The cpu stress test contains many different CPU stress methods covering integer, floating point, bit operations, mixed compute, prime computation, and a wide range of computations.

Install using:

sudo apt-get install stress-ng

To see the cpu related stress methods use:

stress-ng --cpu-method which

To benchmark, for example, matrix product for 60 seconds on 4 CPU threads, use:

stress-ng --cpu 4 --cpu-method matrixprod  --metrics-brief --perf -t 60
stress-ng: info:  [15876] dispatching hogs: 4 cpu
stress-ng: info:  [15876] successful run completed in 60.00s (1 min, 0.00 secs)
stress-ng: info:  [15876] stressor      bogo ops real time  usr time  sys time   bogo ops/s   bogo ops/s
stress-ng: info:  [15876]                          (secs)    (secs)    (secs)   (real time) (usr+sys time)
stress-ng: info:  [15876] cpu              71657     60.00    239.60      0.00      1194.25       299.07
stress-ng: info:  [15876] cpu:
stress-ng: info:  [15876]            885,244,279,148 CPU Cycles                    14.75 B/sec
stress-ng: info:  [15876]          1,289,303,858,968 Instructions                  21.49 B/sec (1.456 instr. per cycle)
stress-ng: info:  [15876]            201,499,961,692 Cache References               3.36 B/sec
stress-ng: info:  [15876]                    790,424 Cache Misses                  13.17 K/sec ( 0.00%)
stress-ng: info:  [15876]            157,689,508,544 Branch Instructions            2.63 B/sec
stress-ng: info:  [15876]              1,232,539,732 Branch Misses                 20.54 M/sec ( 0.78%)
stress-ng: info:  [15876]              5,755,605,036 Bus Cycles                    95.92 M/sec
stress-ng: info:  [15876]            817,296,440,876 Total Cycles                  13.62 B/sec
stress-ng: info:  [15876]                      8,532 Page Faults Minor            142.19 sec  
stress-ng: info:  [15876]                          0 Page Faults Major              0.00 sec  
stress-ng: info:  [15876]                        220 Context Switches               3.67 sec  
stress-ng: info:  [15876]                          0 CPU Migrations                 0.00 sec  
stress-ng: info:  [15876]                          0 Alignment Faults               0.00 sec  

Solution 3:

Old question (with no selected answer yet 😱)

But I recently was looking for a tool available in multiple "distros" (Termux not really being a distro) including Ubuntu, and while the above mentioned packages are a common good choice, I read here: https://linuxhint.com/useful_linux_stress_test_benchmark_cpu_perf/ that 7-zip has a built-in benchmarking tool! And 7zip can be found in nearly every distros repository.

To run a single-thread benchmark: 7z b -mmt1

To run a multi-thread benchmark: 7z b

Results from my Pixel 2 phone:

7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=utf8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,8 CPUs LE)

LE
CPU Freq:  1509  2234  2434  2447  2433  2406  2430  2425  2400

RAM size:    3657 MB,  # CPU hardware threads:   8
RAM usage:    435 MB,  # Benchmark threads:      1

                       Compressing  |                  Decompressing
Dict     Speed Usage    R/U Rating  |      Speed Usage    R/U Rating
         KiB/s     %   MIPS   MIPS  |      KiB/s     %   MIPS   MIPS

22:       1666    99   1631   1621  |      30427   100   2608   2598
23:       1602    99   1644   1633  |      29815   100   2589   2581
24:       1517    99   1644   1632  |      29441   100   2595   2585
25:       1397    99   1607   1596  |      28748   100   2567   2559
----------------------------------  | ------------------------------
Avr:              99   1632   1620  |              100   2590   2581
Tot:              99   2111   2100

Solution 4:

phoronix-test-suite

sudo apt-get install phoronix-test-suite
phoronix-test-suite list-available-suites
# Chose one, and run it.
phoronix-test-suite run pts/cpu    

Benchmarks several real world CPU-heavy use cases like compression, encryption and databases.

Beware that pts/cpu and other benchmarks takes up a few gigabytes of disk space. This might imply that they have more realistic workloads.

Tested on Ubuntu 16.10.