The Resurgence of Software Performance Engineering

Today, most application developers write code without much regard for how quickly it will run. Moreover, once the code is written, it is rare for it to be reengineered to run faster. But two technology trends of historic proportions are instigating a resurgence in software performance engineering, the art of making code run fast. The first is the emergence of cloud computing, where the economics of renting computation, as opposed to buying it, heightens the utility of application speed. The second is the end of Moore's Law, the 50-year technology trend which has, until recently, relentlessly doubled the number of transistors on a semiconductor chip every two years. The end of Moore's Law will cause industry to look beyond semiconductor manufacturers for computing performance. As a result of these two trends, application programmers will increasingly find themselves turning to software performance engineering in order to develop innovative products and applications.