On 14.3.2010, at 13.46, Timo Sirainen wrote:
Well, you just mentioned the benefits :) Less memory usage, less context switches (of any kind). (You aren't assuming I'd do something like one thread per connection, right? That's not going to happen.) .. That's kind of the point. You could have just a few IMAP processes where each can handle hundreds of connections. Currently that's not a very good idea, because a single connection that waits on disk I/O blocks all the other connections in the same process from doing anything.
And for clarification: I don't think these are going to give any huge benefits to most people for now. They should help, but I don't expect any dramatic (order of magnitude) performance improvements. But it's the first step towards supporting higher-latency (NoSQL) databases, and they are going to be great for people who need a lot of cheap HA storage (you know, the people who usually pay me for Dovecot development). And actually I think they're going to be great for other people too, because those databases can support easy and fast replication. I could see myself using local Dovecot servers for my mails in different machines, while Dovecot automatically replicates changes to the master server.