Brendan Gregg

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

My personal opinion is that I don't see a widespread need for more capacity given horizontal scaling and servers that can already exceed 1 Tbyte of DRAM; bandwidth is also helpful, but I'd be concerned about the increased latency for adding a hop to more memory.

Performance 110

Performance Latency Cache Virtualization 110

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. I'd expect between 0.1%

Virtualization 111

Virtualization AWS Hardware Storage 111

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

Brendan Gregg

JULY 4, 2021

I summarized these topics and more as a plenary conference talk, including my own predictions (as a senior performance engineer) for the future of computing performance, with a focus on back-end servers. This was a chance to talk about other things I've been working on, such as the present and future of hardware performance.

Performance 52

Performance Latency Hardware Storage 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. This server is spending about a third of its CPU cycles just checking the time! How long does it take to read the time?

Speed 126

Speed Java AWS Virtualization 126

The Netflix TechBlog

APRIL 17, 2019

Netflix headquarters circa 2014. What does this example have to do with software development and video encoding? Intel and Netflix announced their collaboration on a software video encoder implementation called SVT-AV1 on April 8, 2019. The reference software typically evolves along with the development of the standard.

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

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

My personal opinion is that I don't see a widespread need for more capacity given horizontal scaling and servers that can already exceed 1 Tbyte of DRAM; bandwidth is also helpful, but I'd be concerned about the increased latency for adding a hop to more memory.

Performance 52

Performance Latency Cache Virtualization 52

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. I'd expect between 0.1%

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.

Hardware 40

Hardware Cache Servers Software Engineering 40

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. This server is spending about a third of its CPU cycles just checking the time! How long does it take to read the 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. This server is spending about a third of its CPU cycles just checking the time! How long does it take to read the time?

Speed 40

Speed Java AWS Virtualization 40

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). They use third-party software like Docker or Kubernetes to simplify their administration. Oracle VM Server is based on Xen.

Virtualization 76

Virtualization AWS Engineering Hardware 76

Brendan Gregg

AUGUST 8, 2017

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) */. It's time in some cgroup paths, but this server is not doing much disk I/O. My search was starting to feel cursed.

Latency 111

Latency Metrics C++ Systems 111

All Things Distributed

APRIL 4, 2017

In 2014 and 2015 respectively, AWS opened offices in Stockholm and Espoo, Finland. After finding it cost prohibitive to use colocation centers in local markets where their users are based, iZettle decided to give up hardware. In making the switch to AWS, WOW air has saved between $30,000 and $45,000 on hardware, and software licensing.

AWS 116

AWS Airlines Latency Games 116