[mapserver-users] hyper-threading and performance

[Mark Volz]

Andy,

To be more specific:

I am using GeoMoose.  GeoMoose draws each layer separately so we do benefit
by having a multi-core processor even if there is only one user.  We also are
using a WMS Service so air photos is for the most part a non issue.  If my
understanding is correct hyper-threading has up to a 20 percent increase in
speed.  However, the performance increase is highly application specific and
in some cases performance may actually be lower with Hyper-Threading enabled.


Mark Volz
GIS Specialist
Lyon County, MN

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Colson [mailto:andy at squeakycode.net] 
Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 2:30 PM
To: Mark Volz
Cc: mapserver-users at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [mapserver-users] hyper-threading and performance

On 2/8/2010 2:20 PM, Mark Volz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Does anyone know if the performance of Mapserver is increased if
> hyper-threading is enabled? If so how much?
>
> Mark Volz
>
> GIS Specialist
>
> Lyon County, MN
>

Hey Mark,

What sort of usage are we talking?  Web hosting?  Shapefiles and arials? 
  I'm not sure if mapserver itself will use mult-threads, but if you 
have multiple requests comming into a website, apache/cgi/mapserver/etc 
will use multi process/threads/etc.

Its tough to say the performance increase.  I'm host several maps on a 
dual-core box, and the cpu's sit around 2 percent.  And with lots of 
arial imagery you might hit disk io limit before you hit cpu limit. 
(However, I have had some mrsid files that were really cpu intensive to 
uncompress, they were cpu bound).  Are your cpu's even pegged?

So, I guess, the answer is, it really depends on a lot of different 
variables.


-Andy