Re: [Quickfix-developers] Dual CPUs and Performance

[Dale W. <wil...@oc...>]

Barry Marks wrote:

>Since the QuickFIX Engine is capable of multithreaded operation, I
>would expect dual CPUs to provide increased performance. Even
>without multithreaded operation, it seems that one should be able to
>run 2 instances of the engine, one on each CPU, to get better
>performance.
>  
>
Hi Barry,

I didn't see any response to this message, so I'll give it a shot.

The multithreading in quickfix is basically thread-per-connection.  Thus 
the amount of paralellism is limited to the number of connections (plus 
1 for the main thread).  This is unlikely to have much impact on overall 
performance (throughput) bit it may help with response time.  For any 
significant real-world system I would expect he performance to be 
dominated by application level code, not by the quickfix engine itself.  
If you have performance conceerns, I suggest you start by profiling your 
application so you don't end up optimizing in all the wrong places.

You can't run two quickfix engines in one process[1], but I'm not sure 
that makes much difference because a single engine can handle an 
aribtrary number of connections. 

Dale

[1] At least you aren't supposed to be able to run two engines in one 
process.  I did manage to do that once.  The results were not pretty.

-- 
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  Dale Wilson, Senior Software Engineer      
  Object Computing, Inc. (OCI)
  http://www.ociweb.com/  http://www.theaceorb.com/
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