System Performance as an Aspect of CPUs and Architecture

Todd Jobson Offers a Guide to Making the Right Choice for Your Workload

Todd Jobson's blog on Processors and Performance : Chips, MIPS, and Sizing blips, also appeared as an article that ran in nearly the same format in the November 2007 Sun Technocrat. Jobson examines CPUs and system architecture, as they relate to performance and capacity planning as a whole.

Among the many aspects of the subject that Jobson covers are CISC vs. RISC, a glance at Moore's Law, multi-threading and scalability, CPUs and memory (including chip multi-threading, and cache size), choosing the best CPU for a particular workload, the Niagara 2 processor, Solaris OS kernel metrics and CPU-related performance, an explanation of benchmarks, and some concluding remarks on Sun benchmarks and comparative methodology.