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Seastar: C++ framework for high-performance servers

seastar-project.org

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Re: Seastar: C++ framework for high-performance servers

#21
post #15

They mention that this is using a polling architecture so each core is using 100% cpu even when idle. I've worked on high performance systems architected around polling before, but assumed that would be prohibitively costly these days now that cpu's have really advanced power management capabilities. Is polling architecture still viable for large scale cloud computing given costs of energy consumption? Years ago cpu'…

We plan to reduce power usage on low load eventually.

Sounds awesome but I wouldn't look at something like this (which is awesome btw) unless I was expecting it be under massive sustained load.

For everything else I'd just use Python or PHP as they are mostly fast enough.

I am planning to write a framework in Rust when I have the time though as I find it an interesting language and as a web dev it's my area, I'll definitely be looking at how you approached stuff ;).

Re: Seastar: C++ framework for high-performance servers

#22
post #15

They mention that this is using a polling architecture so each core is using 100% cpu even when idle. I've worked on high performance systems architected around polling before, but assumed that would be prohibitively costly these days now that cpu's have really advanced power management capabilities. Is polling architecture still viable for large scale cloud computing given costs of energy consumption? Years ago cpu'…

We plan to reduce power usage on low load eventually.

Cool, it would be an interesting design to see something with polling and perhaps different gears for lower load levels. BTW, the system with polling architecture that I mentioned I worked on is still in production and selling well(I hear).

Re: Seastar: C++ framework for high-performance servers

#23
post #4

Yup, this is what you can do when you code directly against kernel bypass APIs like DDPK. Important to note they also use effectively a shared nothing architecture between cores. This makes it very NUMA friendly and further favours network performance because you are able to lock processes/threads to the cores that are directly attached to said network adapter. The architecture is pretty well known but it's nice to s…

This. There are plenty of opportunities to try out userland/"kernel bypass" network stacks, but I've always wanted to see a framework that integrates it for me. Even if you still need to get elbow deep to do anything advanced, it's great to see a template, a skeleton, on how to put everything together.
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