Acknowledgments

First, I want to thank to the good people at Prentice Hall, including Jill Harry, Brenda Mulligan, Gina Kanouse, and Keith Cline.

Second, I want to thank all the people who reviewed the initial book proposal and added valuable technical reviews and suggestions, including Karel Baloun, Joe Brazeal, Bill Carr, Jonathan Corbet, Matthew Crosby, Robert Husted, Paul Lussier, Scott Mann, Bret Strong, and George Vish II. I also want to thank all the people who taught me what I know about performance and let me optimize Linux even though the value of Linux optimization was uncertain at the time, including John Henning, Greg Tarsa, Dave Stanley, Greg Gaertner, Bill Carr, and the whole BPE tools group (which supported and encouraged my work on Linux).

In addition, I want to thank the good folks of SPEC who took me in and taught me why benchmarks, when done well, help the entire industry. I especially want to thank Kaivalya Dixit, whose passion and integrity for benchmarking will be sorely missed.

Thanks also to all the people who helped me keep my sanity with many games of Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan, including Sarah Ezolt, Dave and Yoko Mitzel, Tim and Maureen Chorma, Ionel and Marina Vasilescu, Joe Doucette, and Jim Zawisza.

Finally, I want to thank my family, including Sasha and Mischief, who remind me that we always have time for a walk or to chase dental floss; Ron and Joni Elias, who cheer me on; Russell, Carol, and Tracy Ezolt, who gave their support and encouragement as I worked on this; and to my wife, Sarah, who is the most understanding and supportive person you can imagine.