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Performance characteristics


Disk operations - The cost of handling disk activity varies between the architectures based on what, if any, circumstances cause all request processing to stop while a disk operation is in progress. In the MP and MT models, only the process or thread that causes the disk activity is blocked. In AMPED, the helper processes are used to perform the blocking disk actions, so while they are blocked, the server process is still available to handle other requests. The extra cost in the AMPED model is due to the inter-process communication between the server and the helpers. In SPED, one process handles all client interaction as well as disk activity, so all user-level processing stops whenever any request requires disk activity.


Memory effects - The server's memory consumption affects the space available for the filesystem cache. The SPED architecture has small memory requirements, since it has only one process and one stack. When compared to SPED, the MT model incurs some additional memory consumption and kernel resources, proportional to the number of threads employed (i.e., the maximal number of concurrently served HTTP requests). AMPED's helper processes cause additional overhead, but the helpers have small application-level memory demands and a helper is needed only per concurrent disk operation, not for each concurrently served HTTP request. The MP model incurs the cost of a separate process per concurrently served HTTP request, which has substantial memory and kernel overheads.


Disk utilization - The number of concurrent disk requests that a server can generate affects whether it can benefit from multiple disks and disk head scheduling. The MP/MT models can cause one disk request per process/thread, while the AMPED model can generate one request per helper. In contrast, since all user-level processing stops in the SPED architecture whenever it accesses the disk, it can only generate one disk request at a time. As a result, it cannot benefit from multiple disks or disk head scheduling.


next up previous
Next: Cost/Benefits of optimizations & Up: Design comparison Previous: Design comparison
Peter Druschel
1999-04-27