首先，正如前面几个回答中提到的，了解是什么影响了您的性能——是内存、处理器、网络、数据库还是其他东西。这取决于…

...if it's memory - find one of the books written long time ago by Knuth, one of "The Art of Computer Programming" series. Most likely it's one about sorting and search - if my memory is wrong then you'll have to find out in which he talks about how to deal with slow tape data storage. Mentally transform his memory/tape pair into your pair of cache/main memory (or in pair of L1/L2 cache) respectively. Study all the tricks he describes - if you don's find something that solves your problem, then hire professional computer scientist to conduct a professional research. If your memory issue is by chance with FFT (cache misses at bit-reversed indexes when doing radix-2 butterflies) then don't hire a scientist - instead, manually optimize passes one-by-one until you're either win or get to dead end. You mentioned squeeze out up to the last few percent right? If it's few indeed you'll most likely win. ...if it's processor - switch to assembly language. Study processor specification - what takes ticks, VLIW, SIMD. Function calls are most likely replaceable tick-eaters. Learn loop transformations - pipeline, unroll. Multiplies and divisions might be replaceable / interpolated with bit shifts (multiplies by small integers might be replaceable with additions). Try tricks with shorter data - if you're lucky one instruction with 64 bits might turn out replaceable with two on 32 or even 4 on 16 or 8 on 8 bits go figure. Try also longer data - eg your float calculations might turn out slower than double ones at particular processor. If you have trigonometric stuff, fight it with pre-calculated tables; also keep in mind that sine of small value might be replaced with that value if loss of precision is within allowed limits. ...if it's network - think of compressing data you pass over it. Replace XML transfer with binary. Study protocols. Try UDP instead of TCP if you can somehow handle data loss. ...if it's database, well, go to any database forum and ask for advice. In-memory data-grid, optimizing query plan etc etc etc.

HTH:)

如果更好的硬件是一个选择，那么一定要去做。否则

Check you are using the best compiler and linker options. If hotspot routine in different library to frequent caller, consider moving or cloning it to the callers module. Eliminates some of the call overhead and may improve cache hits (cf how AIX links strcpy() statically into separately linked shared objects). This could of course decrease cache hits also, which is why one measure. See if there is any possibility of using a specialized version of the hotspot routine. Downside is more than one version to maintain. Look at the assembler. If you think it could be better, consider why the compiler did not figure this out, and how you could help the compiler. Consider: are you really using the best algorithm? Is it the best algorithm for your input size?

缓存!要使几乎任何事情都变得更快，一个便宜的方法(在程序员的努力中)是在程序的任何数据移动区域添加缓存抽象层。无论是I/O还是只是传递/创建对象或结构。通常，向工厂类和读取器/写入器添加缓存是很容易的。

有时缓存不会给你带来太多好处，但这是一种简单的方法，只需添加缓存，然后在没有帮助的地方禁用它。我经常发现这样做可以获得巨大的性能，而无需对代码进行微观分析。

谷歌方法是一个选项“缓存它..”只要可能，不要碰磁盘。”

如果你有很多高度并行的浮点运算——尤其是单精度运算——尝试使用OpenCL或(对于NVidia芯片)CUDA将其卸载到图形处理器上(如果有的话)。gpu在着色器中拥有强大的浮点计算能力，这比CPU要大得多。

调整操作系统和框架。

这听起来可能有点夸张，但可以这样想:操作系统和框架被设计用来做很多事情。您的应用程序只做非常具体的事情。如果你能让操作系统完全满足你的应用程序的需求，并让你的应用程序理解框架(php，.net,java)是如何工作的，你就能从硬件上得到更好的东西。

例如，Facebook改变了Linux中的一些内核级别的东西，改变了memcached的工作方式(例如，他们写了一个memcached代理，使用udp而不是tcp)。

另一个例子是Window2008。Win2K8有一个版本，你可以安装运行X应用程序所需的基本操作系统(例如web应用程序，服务器应用程序)。这大大减少了操作系统在运行进程方面的开销，并为您提供了更好的性能。

当然，你应该在第一步就投入更多的硬件……