Abstract

“A computer consists of a CPU , RAM, DISK and I/O” has done more damage to computer performance than any 3D eye-candy will ever do.

Recent (ie: 1980) advances in hardware and operating systems are largely ignored in education of programmers, leading to inefficient and stupid programming practices, which neither faster hardware nor better operating systems can do much about.

Using the Varnish HTTP accellerator he wrote as an example, a hard-core kernel programmer will try to show how an application, properly designed for modern hardware and operating systems, can be 10 times faster than the competition, and still not use more than a fraction of the hardware resources.

Bio: Poul-Henning Kamp has been programming computers since the early eighties. From microcontrollers to mainframes, from temperature control in greenhouses to air traffic control, he has the T-shirts to prove it. His has avoided the 15minutes of fame by living in Denmark and totally missing the dot-com bubble. His main claim is his 15 years of work on the FreeBSD system and kernel, from where his code has a tendency to spill over into both other operating systems and applications, so even if you do not run FreeBSD, the chances of you not running his code are marginal. Unconstrained by formal education and good upbringing he has opinions about just about everything, and the code to back most of the opinons up.