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eBay Makes Huge Gains In Parallel Efficiency

Posted by kdawson on from the free-servers-and-a-pony dept.

CurtMonash writes "Parallel Efficiency is a simple metric that divides the actual work your parallel CPUs do by the sum of their total capacity. If you can get your parallel efficiency up, it's like getting free servers, free floor space, and some free power as well. eBay reports that it amazed even itself by increasing overall PE from 50% to 80% in about 6 months — across tens of thousands of servers. The secret sauce was data warehouse-based analytics. I.e., eBay instrumented its own network to do minute-by-minute status checks, then crunched the resulting data to find bottlenecks that needed removing. Obviously, savings are in the many millions of dollars. eBay has been offering some glimpses into its analytic efforts this year, and the PE savings are one of the most concrete examples they're offering to validate all this analytic cleverness."

6 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Finance by Exanon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Huh, that should hopefully make their stock price go up a little bit. Whatever mitigates the financial crisis is great...

    1. Re:Finance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why would stock prices go up if the value of a dollar is in the process of doubling?

      Doubling? Against what benchmark has the value of a dollar doubled? The euro? Gold? UK pound? Canadian dollar? Swiss franc? The price of oil has dropped dramatically, but that has more to do with the oil market realizing that a world recession is going to reduce demand for oil.

      The values of the stock markets have almost nothing to do with anything real.

      Slightly true. A share is a real, small fractional ownership of a real company. Companies that have assets, sales, products, services, employees, and (hopefully) profits. The intrinsic value of that share can be determined by looking at the underlying business and calculating its value.

      But then you get interesting things. If you look at the value of the New York Times, they only have one real asset: their massive headquarters on prime real estate in Manhattan. The value of the New York Times company is almost the same as the value of that building. All the other assets (printing presses, distribution channels, the brand recognition of a famous newspaper, advertising, sales, other publications, etc) are valued by the market at next to nothing. Is the market wrong? Maybe. The business must be worth something, right?

      On the other hand, the New York Times is controlled by one family and will be very difficult to take over. The family isn't having much success in growing the business. All newspapers are having trouble with circulation numbers, and they are getting squeezed for advertising revenue by other sources (like online ads). To remain a successful business, they need to cut costs and/or increase revenue. That's why the market valuation of the New York Times is next to nothing compared to the hard assets.

      Far more important are the numbers of real and imaginary dollars in existence.

      Imaginary dollars? Care to explain? What are these magical imaginary dollars?

      Despite your low slashdotID, you sound a bit like a kook.

  2. Good for them! by vintagepc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Kudos to them for taking the initiative to be more efficient rather than to just buy more servers to increase capacity. On a side note, I wonder if this makes their servers able to process their data faster... If so, it means more getting sniped (and possibly snipers getting sniped) for the average joe.

    --
    Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
  3. Nice timing for this story... by Adult+film+producer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Right now is the time to soothe investor fears caused by their recent tapping of a $1 Billion line of credit..

    http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE49G7L420081017

    Analyst forecast lower revenue for Ebay in coming quarters, DOH.

    http://tinyurl.com/5e69mt

  4. Re:News from the Future... by Kris_J · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And if you want to deal with them, you have to use their warehouse-based analytics.

    Oh, and PayPal and Ebay fees will be going up next week.

  5. Sellers Leaving in Droves, and Many Glitches by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 2, Interesting

    eBay today isn't the same type of place as 6 months ago. So much has changed; it's essentially a just facade of its former self.

    eBay sellers have been leaving in droves, and there have been more glitches, some quite serious, on both eBay and PayPal lately.

    It would have been more interesting to see such an article discussing parallel efficiency gain at say Amazon or some other large retailer whose business model / activity level had remained similar during the time period being measured.

    Ron