Software Performance and Scalability: A Quantitative Approach

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank all of the colleagues I had worked with in the field of physics research. Some of the greatest physicists that I was so lucky to have had a chance to work for and with include: Professor S. Liu, Professor J. Xie, Dr. J. Le Duff, Professor Dr. A. Richter, Dr. J. Bisognano, Dr. G. Neil, and Dr. F. Dylla. Because of them, my previous physics research career had been so enjoyable and fruitful. I'd like to mention that my current career as a software performance engineer has benefited tremendously from my previous career as a physicist. Although I left physics research and jumped to computers and software about a decade ago, the spirit of pursuing a subject in a rigorous, quantitative, and objective manner cultivated through my earlier physics research career has never left me. I have had this hopelessly immutable habitude of trying to deal with every software performance issue as quantitatively as possible as if it were a physics research subject. I have been totally soaked with that spirit, which gives me the power and energy for pursuing every challenging software performance and scalability problem quantitatively, and thus this book—Software Performance and Scalability: A Quantitative Approach.

With my career as a software performance professional, I'd like to especially thank Pat Crain, who introduced me to applying queuing theory to solving software performance challenges. Pat also encouraged me to write my first research paper on software ...