InnoDB uses its own mutexes and read-write locks instead of POSIX-mutexes pthread_mutex*, the main reason for that is performance, but InnoDB’s implementation isn’t ideal and on modern SMP boxes can cause serious performance problems. Let’s look on InnoDB mutex (schematic for simplification):
Intel Woodcrest vs AMD Opteron for MySQL
AnandTech published Intel Woodcrest preview benchmarks which have some numbers for MySQL as well. From these numbers performance looks great and it looks like finally Intel has something to respond to AMD Opterons on Server market. Now competition heats up and we’ll see what AMD will have to respond. As Opteron did not have serious [...]

