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P4 Server Administration Documentation | 2026.1

# CPU

CPU resource consumption can increase due to factors such as:

- complexity in the protections table
- compression and decompression
- lockless reads in some situations, although lockless reads are generally better for performance than file locking (see db.peeking)

When considering a CPU choice, we recommend the maximum clock rate that is available on the number of cores required for your typical workload. For detailed guidance for your typical workload, contact P4 Consulting.

Faster processors and memory in the machine where `p4d` executes might result in faster execution of `p4d` commands. Because portions of some commands acquire and hold resources that might block other commands, it is important that these portions of the commands execute as fast as possible. Some `p4d` commands have a compute phase during which shared locks are acquired and held on some of the `db.*` files. A shared lock on a `db.*` file blocks an operation that writes to the same `db.*` file. If the data needed for a command’s compute phase is cached within the operating system’s filesystem cache, only the processor and memory speed constrains the compute phase. Given the list of Commands implementing lockless reads, speeding commands through the server with a fast CPU might not be as critical from a concurrency point of view. Many commands can run concurrently through the P4 Server, so more CPU cores might be better utilized.

The complexity of the site’s protections table and of client views can affect CPU requirements. You can monitor CPU utilization using OS utilities such as `top` (on Linux and Unix) and `perfmon` (on Windows). Installations with high CPU utilization on the machine where `p4d` executes that are already using fast processors might need more processors or processors with more cores.

If you are using SSL/TLS to secure client-server connections, choose a CPU that supports the AES instruction set. P4 Server normally uses AES-256 to encrypt its SSL/TLS connections, so using a CPU that supports AES will minimize the encryption overhead.

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