> But it might also help when the machine is performing a service which requires very little CPU time but moves huge amounts of data. Like serving video. Are the big video servers still x86 machines, or does Netflix now use custom hardware?
Netflix is using x86 for their video servers. They're running FreeBSD, and they've published recently[1] about moving TLS session crypto into the kernel so they can serve their videos with TLS without as much of a performance loss. The pdf mentions they were able to get 40 Gbps out of their machines with TLS disabled; with TLS enabled, they were only able to get close to 10 Gbps. CPU is E5-2650L (Sandy Bridge), serving from SSD, equipped with quad port 10g nic.
Netflix is using x86 for their video servers. They're running FreeBSD, and they've published recently[1] about moving TLS session crypto into the kernel so they can serve their videos with TLS without as much of a performance loss. The pdf mentions they were able to get 40 Gbps out of their machines with TLS disabled; with TLS enabled, they were only able to get close to 10 Gbps. CPU is E5-2650L (Sandy Bridge), serving from SSD, equipped with quad port 10g nic.
[1] https://people.freebsd.org/~rrs/asiabsd_2015_tls.pdf