Computer Performance

The field of computing provided me with a day job for over 40 years. I shall not bore you by reciting the various areas that I worked in. Suffice it to say that in the last 25 years I worked principally in technical architectures, specialising in computer performance. I was particularly in demand for predicting performance before systems had been developed, probably because nobody else was daft enough to do it! I used to call it the Crystal Ball Gazing Act, because it was often 90% judgement and 10% science.

Eventually I wrote a book, Performance Assurance for IT Systems, which was published by CRC Press in August 2004. It was split into two main sections: lifecycle processes and technology tasters. Each taster provides an overview of a given technology and describes the factors which can affect its performance. There are sixteen tasters in the book.

This page provides access to supplementary material that I subsequently produced after the book was published. While some of it may be out of date much will still be germane, particularly the discussions on processes.

Treat it as a (hopefully) useful archive. Here it is (they are all pdf files) …

• Synopsis of the book
• More on Lifecycle Processes
• Yet More On Tasters
• eight additional technology tasters ..
  • Server Consolidation: Virtualisation and Other Partitioning Techniques
  • Thin Client Technology for Windows-based Systems
  • Hyper-threading
  • BandWidth Management (Edge)
  • Cluster Interconnect Technologies
  • Uses Of Cluster Interconnects: Distributed Shared Memory Systems, Computing Clusters, and Cluster Filesystems / Databases
  • Portals
  • Simultaneous Multi-Threading
• Performance Monitor Foibles