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CPU Cache Flushing Fallacy
Even from highly experienced technologists I often hear talk about how certain operations cause a CPU cache to "flush". This seems to be illustrating a very common fallacy about how CPU caches work,...
View ArticlePrinting Generated Assembly Code From The Hotspot JIT Compiler
Sometimes when profiling a Java application it is necessary to understand the assembly code generated by the Hotspot JIT compiler. This can be useful in determining what optimisation decisions have...
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Java Garbage Collection Distilled
Serial, Parallel, Concurrent, CMS, G1, Young Gen, New Gen, Old Gen, Perm Gen, Eden, Tenured, Survivor Spaces, Safepoints, and the hundreds of JVM startup flags. Does this all baffle you when trying to...
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Lock-Based vs Lock-Free Concurrent Algorithms
Last week I attended a review session of the new JSR166StampedLock run by Heinz Kabutz at the excellent JCrete unconference. StampedLock is an attempt to address the contention issues that arise in a...
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Simple Binary Encoding
Financial systems communicate by sending and receiving vast numbers of messages in many different formats. When people use terms like "vast" I normally think, "really..how many?" So lets quantify...
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