eBay Makes Huge Gains In Parallel Efficiency 47
CurtMonash writes "Parallel Efficiency is a simple metric that divides the actual work your parallel CPUs do by the sum of their total capacity. If you can get your parallel efficiency up, it's like getting free servers, free floor space, and some free power as well. eBay reports that it amazed even itself by increasing overall PE from 50% to 80% in about 6 months — across tens of thousands of servers. The secret sauce was data warehouse-based analytics. I.e., eBay instrumented its own network to do minute-by-minute status checks, then crunched the resulting data to find bottlenecks that needed removing. Obviously, savings are in the many millions of dollars. eBay has been offering some glimpses into its analytic efforts this year, and the PE savings are one of the most concrete examples they're offering to validate all this analytic cleverness."
Finance (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever mitigates the financial crisis is great...
Why would stock prices go up if the value of a dollar is in the process of doubling?
The values of the stock markets have almost nothing to do with anything real. Far more important are the numbers of real and imaginary dollars in existence.
Or put another way. Want the stock markets to go up? Well, persuade your bank to stop taking dollars out and shooting them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would stock prices go up if the value of a dollar is in the process of doubling?
Doubling? Against what benchmark has the value of a dollar doubled? The euro? Gold? UK pound? Canadian dollar? Swiss franc? The price of oil has dropped dramatically, but that has more to do with the oil market realizing that a world recession is going to reduce demand for oil.
The values of the stock markets have almost nothing to do with anything real.
Slightly true. A share is a real, small fractional ownership of a real co
Re: (Score:1)
i call bullshit! the worth of the stock market tonight is what everyone is worth tomorrow. i don't have a single dollar in the stock market, but i can see how it effects the few i do have in my wallet...
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Even if eBay has made real efficiency improvements, few investors will comprehend the meaning of the claim in terms of "anything real," e.g., power consumption, productivity, seller satisfaction, etc.
They'll just think, "That's a good place to put my money."
Right after that, they'll think, "Isn't it?"
Of course their PE has gone up (Score:2)
Good for them! (Score:3, Interesting)
But where's the beef? (Score:5, Insightful)
What interesting things did they learn? What were they doing wrong before and what did they change?
I don't see any hard facts or much useful info.
Car analogy: it's like Ford says we've improved engine efficiencies 1.6X.
But you don't even get new MPG figures, no comparison of 0-60 before and after (to show whether there was any impact on performance), no torque curves, not even a mention of "high intensity electric fields reducing viscosity".
So to me it's as good as some PR firm bullshit and should not be on Slashdot.
Heck it's about as much useful news as programmer productivity improving because Slashdot went down for a day.
Re: (Score:2)
This is called a slashvertisment, and is not uncommon in these parts.
To paraphrase: You must be new here...
Re: (Score:1)
Of course (Score:5, Funny)
With the extra millions saved, they are going to lower their fees...as well as spend some time trying to figure out how to quit pissing everyone off...right?
Transporter_ii
One bottleneck begets another (Score:1)
WOW, way to go IT techs for ebay! I find it fascinating reading articles on the removal of bottle necks. Its interesting the tools and methods that are used to monitor specific parts of the company's IT System (servers, network, applications and more).
It is interesting how one bottle neck is overcome only to find yet another bottleneck. Very cool.
News from the Future... (Score:3, Funny)
Today, ebay announced that it obtained a patent on using warehouse-based analytics to increase parallel efficiency in server operations.
Re:News from the Future... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and PayPal and Ebay fees will be going up next week.
Re: (Score:2)
Today, ebay announced that it obtained a patent on host monitoring.
Seriously, doesn't everyone already monitor every tiny metric and application hook?
I know one company that had an awesome metric accounting system. Tons of data, down to the second, and extremely efficient.
Impressive Gain (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent troll. 7/10
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe this was done to a mgmt goal? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can imagine this: Some eBay hotshot comes up and says: "we only use 50% of our servers, we've got to do better here". So:
1) They don't buy new servers. Workload increases, better utilization, no analytics involved.
2) Or, someone got clever, and added an idling process to each idle server. Presto, we've improved our PE -- and we've got a nice yearly bonus as well.
The article actually says nothing, besides claiming a supposed 1.6x improvement, besides a very vauge refrence to analytics. This ./ post is actually meant to promote www.xlmpp.com.
Re: (Score:2)
I can imagine this: Some eBay hotshot comes up and says: "we only use 50% of our servers, we've got to do better here". So:
1) They don't buy new servers. Workload increases, better utilization, no analytics involved.
2) Or, someone got clever, and added an idling process to each idle server. Presto, we've improved our PE -- and we've got a nice yearly bonus as well.
I'm guessing their improvement figure of 50% -> 80% doesn't include the machines and processing overhead necessary to run the datawarehouse an
Nice timing for this story... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE49G7L420081017 [reuters.com]
Analyst forecast lower revenue for Ebay in coming quarters, DOH.
http://tinyurl.com/5e69mt [tinyurl.com]
Ebay credibility (Score:2)
...and Paypal makes all your transactions safe and worry free.
Pull the other one.
self promotion (Score:2, Insightful)
Sellers Leaving in Droves, and Many Glitches (Score:3, Interesting)
eBay today isn't the same type of place as 6 months ago. So much has changed; it's essentially a just facade of its former self.
eBay sellers have been leaving in droves, and there have been more glitches, some quite serious, on both eBay and PayPal lately.
It would have been more interesting to see such an article discussing parallel efficiency gain at say Amazon or some other large retailer whose business model / activity level had remained similar during the time period being measured.
Ron
leaving to where? (Score:2)
eBay has been pissing people off for years, but the main problem is that a functioning marketplace requires a critical mass of buyers and sellers, and none of the competitors (e.g. Yahoo Auctions) have managed to build nearly enough of a critical mass. Just about the only exceptions are in product-specific areas, for example eBay has never really owned the used book market, where Amazon Marketplace et al do a brisk business.
Slashvertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we know eBay is trying to boost it's stock value and xlmpp.com wants more traffic.
Tag it what it is an move on. There's not much real info here.
Oh, good! (Score:1)
This means the scammers can rip buyers off even more efficiently. Good job, eBay!
Re: (Score:2)
Oh great - now they're laying off machines too? (Score:1)
I mean, they're already increasing the "parallel efficiency" of their human workforce [mercurynews.com].
Servers of the world, unite!
Makes sense.... (Score:2)
After all, with all the stolen goods from TSA showing up on eBay, it makes sense that they'd need to beef up their servers. :3
Wait, let me guess. (Score:1)
Performing this number-crunching on idle CPUs/cores is responsible for 90% or more of the improvement from 50% to 80% Parallel Efficiency?
Now I've read the article, and wish I hadn't. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Performing this number-crunching on idle CPUs/cores is responsible for 90% or more of the improvement from 50% to 80% Parallel Efficiency?
Nah, they just realised that by turning off all that heavy monitoring they could suddenly get more performance out of the original servers.
Big Surprise! (Score:2)
If you actually look for where the performance bottlenecks are and remove them, you get better efficiency. Who would ever have guessed?