News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Effect of Pipe Capacity on Unix Pipeline Performance.

Re:The Effect of Pipe Capacity on Unix Pipeline Performance by duskwuff on Thursday February 27, 2020 @01:21PM (#22436064)
> If the two processes exchange data in this pattern [one-to-one exchange], a small pipe doesn’t cause unnecessary blockings.

I don't think this is correct! Context switches are expensive -- a small pipe size will force both processes to make more system calls to move the same amount of data through the pipe.

In this light, the UNIX specification's requirement of 4 KB is definitely too small; even the Linux 2.6+ default of 64 KB feels like it might be on the small side.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Effect of Pipe Capacity on Unix Pipeline Performance by dongyx on Thursday February 27, 2020 @11:12PM (#22440466)
You're right. The words I took are not precise. I don't know how to express the concept that the performance is not essentially affected. Is there a universally acknowledged concept to distinguish the difference? Like the concept of time complexity in the algorithm area.
[ Parent | on HN ]