In a multiengine environment, each task that needs to access the data cache holds a spinlock on the cache while accessing it. With a large number of engines and a high transaction rate, contention for buffer cache spinlocks can slow performance. Adaptive Server version 12.0 allows you to divide each cache into partitions, each with its own spinlock. See Chapter 19, “Configuring Data Caches” in the System Administration Guide for information on how to configure cache partitions. See “Memory Use and Performance” and “Monitoring Performance with sp_sysmon” in the Performance and Tuning Guide for information on how to check cache spinlock contention and other considerations when using cache partitions.
