On Thu, 30 Aug 2007, Mohamed Bamakhrama wrote:
I have a question regarding the average number of assembly instructions per line of kernel code. I know that this is a difficult question since it depends on many factors such as the instruction set architecture, compiler used, optimizations used, type of code, coding style, etc... I would like to know a rough estimate for such a quantity for the kernel 2.4/2.6 code running on MIPS32 architecture compiled using GCC. My estimate is between 5-10 instructions. I googled for such a thing but couldn't find any useful papers/resources.
Compile a full kernel with everything statically linked, then do objdump -D on it. wc it. Then wc the whole kernel tree.
That'll give you a pretty good ball park figure for what you're looking for.
Gordan
