In
software engineering
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...
, a bottleneck occurs when the capacity of an
application or a computer system is limited by a single component, like the neck of a bottle slowing down the overall water flow. The bottleneck has the lowest throughput of all parts of the transaction path.
As such, system designers will try to avoid bottlenecks and direct effort towards locating and tuning existing bottlenecks. Some examples of possible engineering bottlenecks are: a
processor, a
communication link
A data link is the means of connecting one location to another for the purpose of transmitting and receiving digital information (data communication). It can also refer to a set of electronics assemblies, consisting of a transmitter and a recei ...
,
disk IO, etc. Any system or application will hit a bottleneck if the work arrives at a sufficiently fast pace.
According to the
theory of constraints when looking to improve the speed of processing, the point of the bottleneck, or hot spot's occurrence is the place to work on. A thought-provoking stipulation of the theory is that raising the efficiency of a process stage other than the constraint can generate even more delay.
Tracking down bottlenecks (sometimes known as "hot spots" - sections of the code that execute most frequently - i.e. have the highest execution count) is called
performance analysis. Reduction is usually achieved with the help of specialized tools, known as
performance analyzers or
profilers. The objective being to make those particular sections of code perform as fast as possible to improve overall
algorithmic efficiency
In computer science, algorithmic efficiency is a property of an algorithm which relates to the amount of computational resources used by the algorithm. An algorithm must be analyzed to determine its resource usage, and the efficiency of an algo ...
.
See also
*
Performance engineering
*
Profiling (computer programming)
*
Program optimization
In computer science, program optimization, code optimization, or software optimization, is the process of modifying a software system to make some aspect of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources. In general, a computer program may be o ...
References
Software optimization
Software performance management
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