Subject: 10x performance increase

Apache Developers,

I have been improving the performance of the Apache HTTP server for a
few months and I would like to contribute my changes to the main Apache
source stream.

On a two-processor SGI machine running Irix, Apache with my aggressive
optimizations is ten times faster than vanilla Apache/1.3.6 as measured
by the SPECweb96 benchmark, and is faster than both Netscape's FastTrack
server and Zeus's HTTP server.  On a single-processor Linux machine my
Apache is 70% faster than vanilla.  I'm very excited that I have enabled
Apache to compete with commercial web servers on this benchmark without
relying on proprietary kernel extensions such as in-kernel HTTP
accelerators.

I also ported Apache to Irix's 64-bit ABI, enabling the use of a full
64-bit virtual address space for mapped files, and scoured the code
clean of warnings from SGI's linty compilers and gcc.

In exchange for my contribution I require only that I and my employer be
given credit for my work.

Following Brian Behlendorf's advice I will submit a number of discrete
patches against Apache/1.3.6 rather than one big patch.  (Most of the
performance optimizations are in a handful of files, but altogether I
modified over 100 files.)  The patches will include complete
documentation.  I understand that my changes will be subject to review
and I welcome the opportunity to explain them and solicit feedback.

I expect to continue improving Apache's performance, particularly for
the forthcoming SPECweb99 benchmark and Apache 2.0, and I hope to
continue contributing enhancements for some time.

I look forward to working with all of you.
--
Michael J. Abbott    mja@sgi.com