If a session sleeps (because it cannot obtain a latch), response time is significantly degraded. You can decrease the probability of the session sleeping by increasing the value of the configuration parameters _SPIN_COUNT (also called _LATCH_SPIN_COUNT). This parameter controls the number of attempts the session makes to obtain the latch before sleeping.
Spinning on the latch consumes CPU. If you increase this parameter, you may see an increase in the overall CPU utilization of your system. If your computer is near 100% CPU utilization, and your application is throughput rather than response time driven, you could consider decreasing _SPIN_COUNT in order to conserve CPU.
Adjusting _SPIN_COUNT is a trial and error process. In general, only increase this parameter if there are ample free CPU resources available on your system, and decrease it only if there is no spare CPU capacity.
For more information on adjusting the value of _SPIN_COUNT, see the Tuning | Latch Page.
