OT: why are LAMP sites slow?

[Paul Rubin]

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> writes:
> [other good stuff from Tim snipped]
> > Today I think most seeks can be eliminated by just using ram or SSD
> > (solid state disks) instead of rotating disks.  But yeah, you wouldn't
> > do that on a laptop.
> 
> But that still does not solve the latency problem of session
> establishment/ teardown over network fabric which is the Achilles
> Heel of the web and web services.

Well, HTTP 1.1 keepalives takes care of some of that, but really,
really, most of this problem is server side, like when you browse a
Wikipedia page it might take a few seconds, which isn't good, but when
you update it, it takes most of a minute, which is awful.  The
difference is that editing means server side web cache misses followed
by a database update that affects numerous indices.

Wikipedia keeps having these fundraising drives to buy more server CPU
iron (I've donated a few times) but I wonder if they'd be better off
spending it on solid state disks and/or software reorganization.