Hi Jeff, After looking at the ChunkD code and related systems it is not clear that multi-threading will be a performance win and may have adverse effects.
The critical issues come down to the storage, network and application. Given the server cluster application, a Gbe network interface and rotating media storage, it is clear that the disk media speed is the bottleneck and seek time a significant hazard. The set-up time for a transfer is relatively small compared to the disk time for large transfers. Allowing multiple threads may cause thrashing of the I/O system, driving seek time into the lead bottleneck. We need a better model and testing to see what really makes sense in order to proceed intelligently. Also, there are a wide variety of threading options. Using Pthreads is probably the most broadly understood and supported. - Rick -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe hail-devel" in the body of a message to [email protected] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
