by Ben Christensen and Jafar Husain Our recent post on optimizing the Netflix API introduced how our web service endpoints are implemented using a reactive programming model for composition of asynchronous callbacks from our service layer. This post takes a closer look at how and why we use the reactive model and introduces our open source project RxJava — a Java implementation of Rx (Reactive Ext

Scalability. It's the question that drives us. It's an anomaly inherent to the programming of the matrix. It's time for servers to handle 10 million simultaneous connections, don't you think? After all, computers now have 1000 times the memory as 15 years ago when the first started handling 10 thousand connections. Today (2013), $1200 will buy you a computer with 8 cores, 64 gigabytes of RAM, 10-g

Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It? The current version is v2023.06.11a [PDF] (single-column format [PDF], ebook format [PDF], change log). The default double-column format is easiest on both the trees and the eyes in paperback book form. The single-column format works well on large-format ebook readers. Smartphones and smaller ebook readers get better results with

C is a simple language. You’re only allowed to have one function with each name. C++, on the other hand, gives you much more flexibility: You can have multiple functions with the same name (overloading). You can overload built-in operators like + and ==. You can write function templates. Namespaces help you avoid naming conflicts. I like these C++ features. With these features, you can make str1 +

June 11, 2013 Volume 11, issue 5 PDF Nonblocking Algorithms and Scalable Multicore Programming Exploring some alternatives to lock-based synchronization Samy Al Bahra, AppNexus Real-world systems with complicated quality-of-service guarantees may require a delicate balance between throughput and latency to meet operating requirements in a cost-efficient manner. The increasing availability and decr

Formally, a multi-threaded algorithm is considered to be lock-free if there is an upper bound on the total number of steps it must perform between successive completions of operations. The statement is simple, but its implications are deep – at every stage, a lock-free algorithm guarantees forward progress in some finite number of operations. Deadlock is impossible. The promise of a lock-free al