Performance
Compared with ext2 and ext3 in version 2.4 of the Linux kernel, when dealing with files under 4 KiB and with tail packing enabled, ReiserFS may be faster. This was said to be of great benefit in Usenet news spools, HTTP caches, mail delivery systems and other applications where performance with small files is critical. However, in practice news spools use a feature called cycbuf, which holds articles in one large file; fast HTTP caches and several revision control systems use similar approach, nullifying these performance advantages. For email servers, reiserfs was problematic due to semantic problems explained below. Also, ReiserFS had a problem with very fast filesystem aging when compared to other filesystems – in several usage scenarios filesystem performance decreased dramatically with time.
Before Linux 2.6.33, ReiserFS heavily used the big kernel lock (BKL) — a global kernel-wide lock — which does not scale very well for systems with multiple cores, as the critical code parts are only ever executed by one core at a time.
Read more about this topic: ReiserFS
Famous quotes containing the word performance:
“The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall.... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn’t do if your life depended on it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“No performance is worth loss of geniality. ‘Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)