10.1. CPU-Bound Application

In this chapter, we investigate an application that is CPU-bound. It is important to be able to optimize a CPU-bound application because it is one of the most common performance problems.

It is also usually the final frontier for a heavily tuned application.

As the disk and network bottlenecks are removed, the application becomes CPU-bound. In addition, it is often easier to buy faster disks or more memory than to upgrade a CPU, so if a process is CPU-bound, it is an important skill to be able to hunt down and fix a CPU performance problem rather than just buy a new system.