Since seeing the MIX06 Keynote (view the recorded version at http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx), I've gotten a series of emails from readers regarding details on the 'lawnmower' slide MySpace showed at today's demo. I'm reproducing it here and will explain below:
We captured this screen shot immediately after applying code refactored to 80 out of 246 MySpace Home profile servers. By way of background, the Home Profile page is the 'control panel' for MySpace members; it's the place a member checks for messages, comments and bulletins; the place from which a member edits their profile, upload photos and much, more. Long story short: it's among the most-hit server farms in the MySpace data center.
Once the refactor was applied, CPU utilization dropped from 85% to 27%, making it possible to reduce the number of servers in the server farm. This is a real example of .NET performance gains.