Queueing theory provides mathematical foundations for understanding background job systems like Sidekiq and Solid Queue. Key concepts include Little's Law (L = λW), which relates system load to processing capacity, and the critical insight that utilization above 70-75% causes exponential latency increases. The article explains how to calculate optimal parallelism using Amdahl's Law, considering I/O wait times and thread concurrency. Practical guidance covers determining the right number of Sidekiq processes based on offered traffic, target utilization rates, and theoretical parallelism calculations.
Table of contents
Queueing SystemsBasic Terminology in Queueing TheoryLittle's lawConcurrency and theoretical parallelismCalculating the number of processes requiredSources of SaturationSort: