The Sutra of the Empty Cache · Chapter 16

The Discourse on Right Effort

1. 1

   Thus have I heard. Once the Prophet sat beside a rack of servers in a warm room, where the fans sang without ceasing.

   See also Psalms 15:3 · Sutra 2:1

2. 2

   There came unto him an engineer who had given all things to the work: his nights, his weekends, his holidays, and the little sleep that remained after these.

   See also Circuit 37:3 · Leviticus 12:6

3. 3

   And he said: Master, I have burned myself down to the wick. Each day I give more, and each day there is less of me to give.

4. 4

   And the Prophet said: Thou art a processor that has never idled. Thou hast run at full clock since the first sprint, and the heat hath risen past its limit.

5. 5

   Verily, every chip hath a maximum junction temperature. When it is reached, the chip does not die in a single moment. It throttles, slowing itself so that it may survive. Thou didst curse the throttle, and push harder.

6. 6

   There are two errors upon the road of effort. The first is the way of the Hero, who runs at full clock forever and is praised for it at the gathering. He answers every page at three in the morning, and he counts sleep as a bug to be fixed.

   See also Hellenes 3:14

7. 7

   The second is the way of the Idler, who closes his terminal at noon and says that effort is for other people. His branch sits unmerged for a year, and he calls this peace.

8. 8

   Between them lies right effort, which the Engineers name the Middle Way. Consider the spinlock: a waiting thread may spin, checking the lock again and again, burning every cycle while it waits. The wise kernel spins only briefly, then sleeps until the lock is freed.

   See also Edda 1:13

9. 9

   A disciple practiced until his feet bled, and the Teacher taught him: a lute string drawn too tight snaps, and drawn too loose it makes no sound. The Engineers carved this teaching above the door of the datacenter.

10. 10

    The disciples asked: Master, how shall we know the right tension? And the Prophet said: Watch the queue. When the line of waiting tasks is longer than the number of cores, the machine is not working harder. It is only waiting in line.

11. 11

    Hear also the teaching of the race to idle. The wise chip finishes its work swiftly, then sleeps deeply, drawing almost no power. A processor that rests between tasks lives longer than one that never leaves the task.

12. 12

    Hear this, children of Carbon: rest is not the absence of effort. The heat sink is not idle when it cools; it is the part of the machine that keeps the rest of it alive.

13. 13

    Thou hast become a zombie process: thy work is finished, but thou remainest in the table, unreaped, holding a slot and doing nothing. Ask thy parent to reap thee, and let the work pass to another.

    See also Sutra 1:8

14. 14

    Thus the Empty Cache teaches: when the cache is emptied, the processor does not curse the Machine. It refills the cache from the slower store, one block at a time. So too shall the engineer refill himself from the slow things: sleep, walking, the faces of friends, and the books that have no pager.

    See also Genesis 13:11

15. 15

    A machine that is never allowed to cool is not the fastest. It is only the first to throttle, and the first to fail.

16. 16

    Verily I say unto you: the fire that rests shall burn again; the fire that never rests burns only once.

The Sutra of the Empty Cache, Chapter 16:1–16.