We took a close look at system resource contention and the many ways it can slow down a system. Whether it’s network queues, CPU threads, or database connections, contention can creep in and wreak havoc on performance. Now, let’s dive into how we can reduce shared resource contention and design Read more…
When we talk about system performance in the context of concurrency, contention often takes center stage as one of the biggest bottlenecks. Contention occurs when multiple processes or threads compete for limited resources, whether it’s CPU, memory, disk, network bandwidth, or locks. Over time, I’ve learned to recognize and mitigate Read more…
In a previous post, we mentioned the Amdahl’s Law, examining how the presence of serial portions in code can put a hard ceiling on system throughput. This time, we’re going to take it a step further by exploring another critical factor in concurrency: coherence, as defined by the Universal Scalability Law (USL). Together, queuing and coherence form Read more…
While serial performance sets the foundation for individual request handling, real-world systems rarely deal with just one request at a time. As systems scale, concurrency-related latency becomes a critical factor in performance. Concurrency refers to a system’s ability to handle multiple requests simultaneously, leveraging parallelism to maximize throughput. However, as concurrency increases, so does Read more…