LWN: Comments on "A look at "BPF Performance Tools""

A look at "BPF Performance Tools"

dowdle — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 12:01:39 +0000

Mainframes ARE still a thing. Just ask IBM.

In fact, there were a couple of presentations about Mainframes at FOSDEM... or was it linux.conf.au?

There was a claim made that building large systems out of clusters of PC hardware was a problematic way to go... and that the Mainframe offered many advantages over such PC clusters.

A look at "BPF Performance Tools"

bgregg — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 22:02:37 +0000

I might not have been clear in the book, but the 48-CPU systems are EC2 instances and Netflix runs many thousand of them (over 200k instances of varying sizes.) I used a lot of 48-CPU examples since it's a typical instance size for a busy microservice (where the instance count can range from tens to thousands of such instances.)

A look at "BPF Performance Tools"

hkario — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 15:06:59 +0000

I'd say that "big iron" starts if your computer (or cluster) is 48U high or occupies multiple racks...

I mean, it's not like mainframes—the original big iron—aren't a thing any more.

A look at "BPF Performance Tools"

gus3 — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 02:46:01 +0000

Once enough people say "oooh, shiny!" and the market flow rises, it will be. Just like CD/DVD recorders (late 90's) and 2G DIMM's (early 2010's).

A look at "BPF Performance Tools"

edeloget — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 22:52:31 +0000

> Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX is a desktop-oriented 1.5 years old CPU

With a tag price of 1700€, I would consider it "big iron" as well - that's not exactly your average desktop-oriented CPU... :)

A look at "BPF Performance Tools"

hkario — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 18:50:50 +0000

> While the book focuses on performance problems on "big iron"—many of the examples show output from 48-CPU systems

* AMD wants to know your location

seriously though, Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX is a desktop-oriented 1.5 years old CPU and it delivers 64 logical CPUs...