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alangunning/latency_numbers.md

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Created November 16, 2020 23:05
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Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know - MarkDown Fork
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latency_numbers.md

Latency Comparison Numbers

Note: "Forked" from Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know

Event Nanoseconds Microseconds Milliseconds Comparison
L1 cache reference 0.5 - - -
Branch mispredict 5.0 - - -
L2 cache reference 7.0 - - 14x L1 cache
Mutex lock/unlock 25.0 - - -
Main memory reference 100.0 - - 20x L2 cache, 200x L1 cache
Compress 1K bytes with Zippy 3,000.0 3 - -
Send 1K bytes over 1 Gbps network 10,000.0 10 - -
Read 4K randomly from SSD 150,000.0 150 - ~1GB/sec SSD
Read 1 MB sequentially from memory 250,000.0 250 - -
Round trip within same datacenter 500,000.0 500 - -
Read 1 MB sequentially from SSD 1,000,000.0 1,000 1 ~1GB/sec SSD, 4X memory
Disk seek 10,000,000.0 10,000 10 20x datacenter roundtrip
Read 1 MB sequentially from disk 20,000,000.0 20,000 20 80x memory, 20X SSD
Send packet CA → Netherlands → CA 150,000,000.0 150,000 150 -

Unit Reference

  • 1 ns = 10^-9 seconds
  • 1 µs = 10^-6 seconds = 1,000 ns
  • 1 ms = 10^-3 seconds = 1,000 µs = 1,000,000 ns

Credit/Notes

Visual Comparison Charts

Visual Comparison Chart

Scale of Computing Latencies

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