Engine tuning is the adjustment, modification or design of internal combustion engines to yield optimal performance, to increase an engine’s power output, economy, or durability. It has a long history, almost as long as the development of the car in general, originating with the development of early racing cars, and later, with the post-war hot-rod movement. Tuning can describe a wide variety of adjustments and modifications, from the routine adjustment of the carburetor and ignition system to significant engine overhauls. At the other end of the scale, performance tuning of an engine can involve revisiting some of the design decisions taken at quite an early stage in the development of the engine.
Setting the idle speed, fuel/air mixture, carburetor balance, spark plug and distributor point gaps, and ignition timing were regular maintenance items for all older engines and the final but essential steps in setting up a racing engine. On modern engines, equipped with electronic ignition and fuel injection, some or all of these tasks are automated, although they still require periodic calibration.
Performance tuning is the improvement of system performance. This is typically a computer application, but the same methods can be applied to economic markets, bureaucracies or other complex systems. The motivation for such activity is called a performance problem, which can be real or anticipated. Most systems will respond to increased load with some degree of decreasing performance. A system’s ability to accept higher load is called scalability, and modifying a system to handle a higher load is synonymous to performance tuning.
* Systematic tuning follows these steps:
1. Assess the problem and establish numeric values that categorize acceptable behavior.
2. Measure the performance of the system before modification.
3. Identify the part of the system that is critical for improving the performance. This is called the bottleneck.
4. Modify that part of the system to remove the bottleneck.
5. Measure the performance of the system after modification.
This is an instance of the measure-evaluate-improve-learn cycle from quality assurance.
A performance problem may be identified by slow or unresponsive systems. This usually occurs because high system loading, causing some part of the system to reach a limit in its ability to respond. This limit within the system is referred to as a bottleneck.
A handful of techniques are used to improve performance. Among them are code optimization, load balancing, caching strategy, and distributed computing, and self-tuning.
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Great article. Im planning on picking up a Hayabusa this summer and this helped with my decision.