RE: [Webware-discuss] Re: [Cheetahtemplate-discuss] Re: cheetah n ot thread safe

[Tripp L. <tri...@pe...>]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Geoffrey Talvola wrote:

> I'm not conviced that a dynamic algorithm is better than just using a fixed
> pool (assuming we're talking about threads, or servlet instances).  Your box
> has to have enough memory and horsepower to handle the worse case of a
> maxed-out pool, right?  If that's the case, then why not just allocate the
> maximum right up front (or let the pools grow as needed like the servlet
> pools)?  Surely having some extra threads or extra instances lying around
> doesn't noticeably hurt performance.  Also, having to allocate extra
> instances or threads to handle a surge of activity is bound to be somewhat
> costly just at the time when you need the CPU to actually _handle_ the
> requests.
>
> When I deploy WebKit I set the minimum, maximum, and initial thread pool
> sizes to the same value.  Can someone convince me why this is a bad idea?

Well, in my case, I run multiple Webware instances and various other
services on the same box. The box is spec'd to handle my best guess at the
maximum simultaneous load on all of the services, but I'd really like it
if the services could beg, borrow, and steal from one another when their
peak demands are out of sync (which they often are, since they're
different customers having different production schedules, etc.).

So that's -my- motivation for a dynamic algorithm and not setting
min/max/initial to the same value.