Brendan Gregg

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

At USENIX SREcon22 APAC I gave the opening keynote on the future of computer performance, rounding up the latest developments and making predictions of where I see things heading. This talk originated from my updates to Systems Performance 2nd Edition , and this was the first time I've given this talk in person!

Performance 52

Performance Latency Cache Virtualization 52

SQL Performance

JULY 16, 2019

A close monitoring of the hardware enthusiast community, including many of the most respected hardware analysts and reviewers paints an even more dire picture about Intel in the server processor space. Despite all of this, Intel is not going to lose their entire server processor business any time soon.

Servers 46

Servers Hardware Architecture Retail 46

Alex Russell

MARCH 6, 2021

Back in 2016, I gave a talk outlining the causes and effects of the terrible performance of web apps built using popular tools on the fastest-growing device segment: low-end to mid-range Android phones. Poor performance has a compound effect on user expectations at an ecosystem level. Live by the link, die by the link.

Performance 124

Performance Network Cache Metrics 124

Dynatrace

JUNE 15, 2023

If your application runs on servers you manage, either on-premises or on a private cloud, you’re responsible for securing the application as well as the operating system, network infrastructure, and physical hardware. What are some key characteristics of securing cloud applications?

Cloud 168

Cloud Open Source Architecture Monitoring 168

SQL Server According to Bob

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

When we released Always On Availability Groups in SQL Server 2012 as a new and powerful way to achieve high availability, hardware environments included NUMA machines with low-end multi-core processors and SATA and SAN drives for storage (some SSDs). As we moved towards SQL Server 2014, the pace of hardware accelerated.

Availability 40

Availability Servers Hardware Benchmarking 40

Brendan Gregg

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

Hardware virtualization for cloud computing has come a long way, improving performance using technologies such as VT-x, SR-IOV, VT-d, NVMe, and APICv. The latest AWS hypervisor, Nitro, uses everything to provide a new hardware-assisted hypervisor that is easy to use and has near bare-metal performance.

Virtualization 111

Virtualization AWS Hardware Storage 111

Brendan Gregg

SEPTEMBER 25, 2021

These strange questions came to the fore back in 2014 when Netflix was switching services from CentOS Linux to Ubuntu, and I helped debug several weird performance issues including one I'll describe here. A quick check of basic performance statistics showed over 30% higher CPU consumption. How long does it take to read the time?

Speed 126

Speed Java AWS Virtualization 126

SQL Server According to Bob

JUNE 6, 2016

As indicated, SQL Server 2016 added the use of SSE and AVX instructions in various code paths to improve performance. This post will outline SQL Server’s decisions around SSE/AVX or software algorithm use. SQL Server asks the CPU if it supports SSE or AVX in order to determine the level of hardware support present on the system.

Servers 40

Servers Hardware Software Engineering Software 40

SQL Performance

MARCH 17, 2020

Back in 2014, I wrote an article called Performance Tuning the Whole Query Plan. This follow-up post revisits the question for SQL Server 2019, using a larger number of rows. It has 32GB RAM, with 24GB available to the SQL Server 2019 instance. Performance is competitive at around 15ms. Test Environment.

Servers 86

Servers Tuning Database Efficiency 86

The Netflix TechBlog

APRIL 17, 2019

Netflix headquarters circa 2014. Scalable Video Technology (SVT) is Intel’s open source framework that provides high-performance software video encoding libraries for developers of visual cloud technologies. 264/AVC, currently, the most ubiquitous video compression standard supported by modern devices, often in hardware.

Open Source 166

Open Source Scalability Speed Efficiency 166

SQL Server According to Bob

JUNE 3, 2016

SQL Server 2016 ‘It Just Runs Faster’ A bold statement that any SQL Server professional can stand behind with confidence. Try SQL Server 2016 Today. The SQL Server Development team tasked several individuals with scalability improvements and real world testing patterns. – [link]. Follow-up.

Hardware 40

Hardware Software Engineering Transportation Scalability 40

Brendan Gregg

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

Hardware virtualization for cloud computing has come a long way, improving performance using technologies such as VT-x, SR-IOV, VT-d, NVMe, and APICv. The latest AWS hypervisor, Nitro, uses everything to provide a new hardware-assisted hypervisor that is easy to use and has near bare-metal performance.

Virtualization 40

Virtualization AWS Hardware Storage 40

SQL Server According to Bob

JUNE 3, 2016

SQL Server 2016 changes the internal design to (CheckScanner), applying no lock semantics and a design similar to those used with In-Memory Optimized (Hekaton) objects, allowing DBCC operations to scale far better than previous releases. Ryan Stonecipher – Principle SQL Server Software Engineer. SQL Server. set nocount on.

Hardware 40

Hardware Cache Servers Software Engineering 40

SQL Performance

MARCH 8, 2021

SQL Server 2014 SP2 and later produce runtime (“actual”) execution plans that can include elapsed time and CPU usage for each execution plan operator (see KB3170113 and this blog post by Pedro Lopes). SQL Server makes some timing adjustments in parallel plans to promote consistency, but they are not perfectly implemented.

Servers 95

Servers Tuning Architecture Performance 95

Brendan Gregg

SEPTEMBER 25, 2021

These strange questions came to the fore back in 2014 when Netflix was switching services from CentOS Linux to Ubuntu, and I helped debug several weird performance issues including one I'll describe here. A quick check of basic performance statistics showed over 30% higher CPU consumption. How would you time time?

Speed 52

Speed Java AWS Virtualization 52

Brendan Gregg

SEPTEMBER 25, 2021

These strange questions came to the fore back in 2014 when Netflix was switching services from CentOS Linux to Ubuntu, and I helped debug several weird performance issues including one I'll describe here. A quick check of basic performance statistics showed over 30% higher CPU consumption. How long does it take to read the time?

Speed 40

Speed Java AWS Virtualization 40

Tim Kadlec

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Macbook Air (2014). Macbook Air (2014). Macbook Air (2014). Macbook Air (2014). On powerful devices, like my Macbook Air (2014), parse and execution time was negligible. Another interesting note was how significant the impact of hardware has on the timing. Firefox 31. iPad (4th Gen). That’s a bug.

Latency 41

Latency Google Hardware Servers 41

Brendan Gregg

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

Linux has been adding tracing technologies over the years: kprobes (kernel dynamic tracing), uprobes (user-level dynamic tracing), tracepoints (static tracing), and perf_events (profiling and hardware counters). As a performance engineer who does kernel tracing, I find the lack of an ID I can trace in the kernel to be pretty annoying.

Virtualization 76

Virtualization AWS Engineering Hardware 76

Brendan Gregg

AUGUST 8, 2017

If they are higher than your CPU count, then you might have a performance problem (it depends). And here's an excerpt from [Linux] today (include/linux/sched/loadavg.h): #define EXP_1 1884 /* 1/exp(5sec/1min) as fixed-point */ #define EXP_5 2014 /* 1/exp(5sec/5min) */ #define EXP_15 2037 /* 1/exp(5sec/15min) */. to the load average.

Latency 111

Latency Metrics C++ Systems 111