in case anybody finds it useful, here''s a link to Hongli''s work on patching the GC so you can save like 30%/mongrel or so [if you use forked mongrels]. Might be useful if RAM is your bottleneck. http://izumi.plan99.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/14/making-ruby''s-garbage-collector-copy-on-write-friendly-part-7/