Newer x86 systems continue to scale horizontally by adding more cores rather than vertically. This in turn has placed additional strain on other system components such as memory controllers. The solution has been to scale these components horizontally as well. This results in a more complex system requiring additional tuning for optimal performance.
The first part of the talk will provide an overview of these extra-CPU scaling changes in x86 systems. We will also talk about the resulting performance impacts and some of the tradeoffs to consider when tuning.
The second part of the talk will focus on changes to FreeBSD to support these system changes both in past releases and anticipated work in future releases.
Bring your facial tissues. The problems here are similar to those of achieving optimal performance on systems with multiple CPUs, and we all know how well that has worked out.