In the post-stack-smashing-protector world, OpenBSD is the fastest !

Here are some benchmarks from a real-world use case : ./configure && make -j8 && time make test in KC3. The time commands gives three results that we plot in a graph in the → attached PDF. All the machines are 4-core Intel core I5 processors. except for mini and mmg4 that are macOS amd64 and OpenBSD macppc respectively.

The timings can seem incoherent as more time is spent in userland than the real time, that is due to threading and multiprocessing : the CPU time is larger than the real time when running on multiple CPU's at the same time.

The results are unequivocal : OpenBSD is the fastest platform since everyone activated the stack-smashing protector features of their respective compiler and toolchain.

The winners of the race are :

1. OpenBSD 7.8 amd64 (my main development platform, lucky me)
2. Fedora 43 amd64 (developed by IBM, given to students at my former computer school)
3. OpenBSD 7.8 i386 (modern hardware relies on 64-bit MSI-X and i386 is not supported anymore in some recent drivers).
4. Debian stable (Trixie) amd64
5. Gentoo hardened amd64
6. Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky) amd64
7. NetBSD 10.1 amd64
8. FreeBSD 14.3 amd64

I thought FreeBSD was the fastest and Linux would come next. But now that they have all enabled stack smasing protection OpenBSD wins !