https

Thu Jul 31 15:49:53 UTC 2008

Matthew Petach wrote:
> I'm sure when Gmail gets close to the same number of users
> as Yahoo, they will discover how challenging and painful it is
> to support that many simultaneous short-lived SSL connections.
> It's much easier to support CPU intensive tasks like full-time
> SSL when you have a small user base; as that user base
> grows, the cost of providing that service continues to grow,
> often outpacing the revenue benefit it brings.
> 

You're aware that certain chips, such as the UltraSparc T1 and T2 chips, 
have on-board SSL acceleration functions that impose virtually zero 
penalty on SSL encryption (though I suppose that setup/teardown is 
handled by the main CPU)?

--Patrick