Glossary
- Amdahl’s law
A vital insight recognized by Gene Amdahl [Amdahl (1967)], which allows a performance analyst to compute the relevance of various proposed performance improvements:
The performance enhancement possible with a given improvement is limited by the fraction of the execution time that the improved feature is used.
- Arrival rate (λ)
The rate of arrivals into a queueing system per unit of time during a specified time interval.
- Chi-square goodness-of-fit test
A statistical test that is useful in determining whether a data sample is sufficiently likely to belong to a specified distribution.
- Clock interrupt
An interrupt that notifies the operating system kernel that one more time interval has elapsed [Bovet and Cesati (2001) 140].
- Closed form solution
A mathematical result that can be expressed exactly in symbolic form. Contrast a mathematical result that can be expressed only approximately in numeric form.
- Code path
The computer instructions that are executed to produce a given result. Code path reduction is the process of improving performance by eliminating code path without diminishing the functional result.
- Collateral benefit
An unintended positive side effect of an action. A benefit yielded serendipitously by attending to something else.
- Collateral damage
An unintended negative side effect of an action.
- Completion rate (X)
The throughput of a queueing system.
- Compulsive tuning disorder (CTD)
A term created by Gaja Vaidyanatha and Kirti Deshpande to describe an effect of using a performance ...