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Showing posts from November, 2013

Why we shouldn't use more threads than we need to

Overview There is a common argument that because we have lots of cores, and will have even more in the future we have to use them.  We just we need to find the best ways to use them but just because we can doesn't mean we should. What is our goal? Good reasons to use multiple threads are the performance of using one thread is not enough. you have profiled your application to ensure there is no low hanging fruit. multiple threads improve the throughput,  latency or consistency. At this point you should add a thread when you know it gets you closer to your goal. A bad reason to use multiple threads Just because we can use more threads doesn't mean we should.  Multiple threads Adds complexity to the code There are other was to speed up an application.  You L1 cache is 10-20x faster than you L3 cache and if you can spend more time in you L1 cache by optimising your memory usage and access, you can gain more performance than using every CPU in your socket. Mul

Computing units don't have to be confusing

Overview Often programmers will use units in a non standard way and usually you can work out what they meant by context.  Many developers never realise there is inconsistencies is technical material as the difference is small to the amount of error and the difficult of reproducing benchmarks reported. There are times when the difference is so large it does matter and the writer has confused themselves by a lack of understanding which makes your job of trying to work out what they done harder. An array of measures b  = bit. B = byte or 8 bits or 8b g = gram kb = kilobit or 1000 bits. kilo being the scientific prefix for 1000 like kilometer. kB = kilobyte or 1000 bytes, sometimes used for storage kg = kilogram Kb = Kibit =  kibib it or 1024 bytes. KB = KiB =  kibibyte  or 1024 bytes, sometimes used for memory Mb = megabit  = 1000^2 bits or 125 kB. Mb/s is used for network bandwidth. MB = megabyte = 1000^2 bytes, MB/s is used for disk bandwidth. MiB = me