Understanding and improving the performance of internet servers and services

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The goal of this research is to better understand and significantly improve the interaction between the increasingly complex components that comprise modern Internet services.  We believe that existing Internet services and the operating systems on which they place such heavy demands can be improved, especially when executing in modern multi-processor and multi-core environments.  These improvements will enable Internet services to support more simultaneous users, provide better peak throughput and ensure that high throughput and low response times are maintained, even during periods of high load.While the majority of existing research has concentrated on web servers that provide static content, most Internet services deliver dynamically generated content tailored to individual users.  This is done using an architecture comprising three main tiers: web servers, application servers, and database servers.  Usually these different tiers are spread across multiple host systems.  With multi-core chips already available and the number of cores per chip expected to double every eighteen months, the first two tiers of these services are being migrated to a single host with multiple cores and/or processors which will provide significantly more processing power.  We plan to better understand and significantly improve the execution of the first two tiers and eventually all three tiers on a single system.  These systems provide opportunities for faster and better interaction among some or all of the components that comprise the service.  This will result in faster delivery of high quality services to end users while offering cost savings on the machines and their operating costs.