Re: 15000+ processes -- poor performance ?!

Jeff Garzik
2002-12-19T00:51:45Z

On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 04:46:15PM -0800, Till Immanuel Patzschke wrote:
> Dear List(s),
>
> as part of my project I need to run a very high number of processes/threads on a
> linux machine. Right now I have a Dual-PIII 1.4G w/ 8GB RAM -- I am running
> 4000 processes w/ 2-3 threads each totaling in a process count of 15000+
> processes (since Linux doesn't really distinguish between threads and
> processes...).
> Once I pass the 10000 (+/-) pocesses load increases drastically (on startup,
> although it returns to normal), however the system time (on one processor)
> reaches for 54% (12061 procs) while the only non sleeping process is top -- the
> system is basically doing nothing (except scheduling the "nothing" which
> consumes significant system time).
> Is there anything I can do to reduce that system load/time? (I haven't been
> able to exactly define the "line" but it definitly gets worse the more processes
> need to be handled.)

Redesign your program to not do silly things like this.

Unless you have hardware with 5000 or more CPUs...

Jeff