Re: Kernel-bound applications?

Kirk Petersen (kirk@eidolon.speakeasy.org)
Wed, 22 Jul 1998 19:01:23 -0700

> I am trying to write a list of common applications that are
> performance-bound by the kernel. Note that this is distinct from
> applications that are bound by the _hardware_ (e.g. standard
> Ethernet cannot be made to transfer data faster than 10 Mbps),
> including the CPU (e.g. floating point code).

I'm working on a couple methods of optimizing local X Windows
communications. On my machine, it takes something like 100-300
useconds to do reads/writes over a Unix domain socket whereas
copying data via a shared, mmap()ed file (using file locking to
synchronize) takes about 30 useconds.

So, I'm looking at ways of speeding up Unix domain sockets (I'm also
looking at writing an shared memory xtrans driver, but that is
probably less practical and off-topic). It seems to me that
the slow down comes from the buffers that are allocated every
time a read or write is called. But I haven't done enough testing
to be sure of this.

Anyone have any thoughts on this subject? Has anyone looked into
this before?

-- 
Kirk Petersen
www.speakeasy.org/~kirk/


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