The tempdb system database is used for many purposes from materializing temporary tables to storing row version information for snapshot isolation. The default configuration of tempdb may not perform well for many production workloads. In this video, three important considerations to configure tempdb for optimal performance are discussed, including a more in-depth visualization about why creating more data files can be a big advantage.
Video Resources:
Read more about sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks
Read more about sys.dm_os_wait_stats
Read more about DBCC SQLPERF
sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks query to find PAGELATCH_* waits
An advanced option I didn’t mention in the video is to enable Trace Flag 1118 (note: this trace flag is undocumented), which changes the allocation behaviour in tempdb to not use mixed extents. You can read more about this setting here.
Voluntary DBA 