The osm2pgsql/mapnik toolchain is one of the most commonly used means of rendering OSM data, but little systematic work has been done on identifying performance bottlenecks and how to improve update and rendering performance.
Hundreds of hours of rendering and updates have been analyzed to come to conclusions presented here on what can be done to improve the performance of your rendering server.
Interested in sponsoring? Email bonnie@openstreetmap.us to learn more.