SQL Server performs deadlock checking after a minimum period of time for any process that is waiting (or sleeping) for a lock to be released. By default, this minimum period of time is 500 ms. Previous releases of SQL Server perform this deadlock check at the time the process begins to wait for a lock. This deadlock checking is a time--consuming overhead for applications that wait without a deadlock.
You can change the minimum amount of time (in milliseconds) that a process must wait before it initiates a deadlock check using the deadlock checking period configuration parameter. If you expect your applications to deadlock infrequently, you can delay deadlock checking even further and reduce the overhead cost. However, configuring deadlock checking period to a higher value produces longer delays before deadlocks are detected.
For information about deadlock checking, see Chapter 5, “Locking in Adaptive Server,” in the Performance and Tuning Guide.
