Dave McCusker asked:

"If you know another explanation for this story, please tell me about it. Today my newest coworker told me about a very amusing test he ran. For a particular new server, he was able to get N requests per second. Then he ran the same test while compiling C++ source code in a build. This machine had two processors, so a C++ compilation tied up one.

Guess how many requests the server handled during the compilation? More requests, not less. 25% more than when using two processors."

And later... McCusker May 2002 | zombie dance: scheduler is broken

Both Wes Felter and Martin "Coderman" Peck answered my questions. They're both great and interesting answers, but I'll start with Wes's...

Interesting stuff. My students might like to know that Wes refers to Hennessy and Patterson in his answer ;-)