From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Jul 12 18:47:26 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from shell.webmaster.com (mail.webmaster.com [209.133.28.73]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 31426152BE for ; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 18:47:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from davids@webmaster.com) Received: from whenever ([209.133.29.2]) by shell.webmaster.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-12345L500S10000V35) with SMTP id com; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 18:47:16 -0700 From: "David Schwartz" To: "Doug" Cc: Subject: RE: 3C905 versus Intel Etherexpress PRO/100?! Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 18:47:16 -0700 Message-ID: <000001beccd1$a2a3af60$021d85d1@youwant.to> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2377.0 In-Reply-To: Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > *Nod* The argument I seemed to be hearing from the poster I > responded to was, "Why add that optimization to the code if it only buys > us 2%?" A 2% optimization that makes things more complicated would probably be a bad tradeoff on a server or server OS. Cleanliness of implementation is a major priority there, because you really do need rock-solid reliability and maintainability. That tends to stress straightforward design and punish excessive cleverness. I don't particularly care if I have to reboot my desktop. But it really irritates me if I have to reboot my servers. It irritates me more if they reboot themselves. However, I have to admit that while I understand this and agree with it, I make 'dangerous' optimizations to server code all the time. All of those 2% optimizations eventually add up to 20% optimizations -- and that does matter. And after enough time and testing, the new and dangerous code becomes less new and, hopefully, less dangerous. If I were comparing two operating systems for use as a web server, would I care about a 15% performance difference? Would that mean anywhere near as much the difference between 99.9 percent uptime and 99.95 percent? DS To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message