Abstract

A server application is commonly organized as a collection of concurrent threads, each of which executes the code necessary to process a request. This software architecture, which causes frequent control transfers between unrelated pieces of code, decreases instruction and data locality, and consequently reduces the effec- tiveness of hardware mechanisms such as caches, TLBs, and branch predictors. Numerous measurements demonstrate this effect in server applications, which often utilize only a fraction of a modern processor's computational throughput.

Citations