Does the use of the computer while benchmarking have an influence on the benchmark results?

Question

Does using the computer for something else while benchmarking ( with the Benchmark module ) have an influence on the benchmark results?

Answer 1

Yes, it does. This running perl process complies with general process management rules your OS does. OS process scheduler will distribute CPU time amongst all running processes.

There is a way you can influence this distribution - nice command. It can be used to set process priority value, so the scheduler can give such process more CPU time.

The lesser nice priority value, the more CPU time the process will get.

For exmaple command nice -n -20 ./benchmark.pl will get almost all CPU time