Benchmarking Message Queue Latency

Sat, 13 Feb 2016 16:23:39 -0600

About a year and a half ago, I published Dissecting Message Queues, which broke down a few different messaging systems and did some performance benchmarking. It was a naive attempt and had a lot of problems, but it was also my first time doing any kind of system benchmarking. It turns out benchmarking systems correctly is actually pretty difficult and many folks get it wrong. I don’t claim to have gotten it right, but over the past year and a half I’ve learned a lot, tried to build some better tools, and improve my methodology.

Everything You Know About Latency Is Wrong

Sat, 12 Dec 2015 15:12:12 -0600

Okay, maybe not everything you know about latency is wrong. But now that I have your attention, we can talk about why the tools and methodologies you use to measure and reason about latency are likely horribly flawed. In fact, they’re not just flawed, they’re probably lying to your face.

When I went to Strange Loop in September, I attended a workshop called “Understanding Latency and Application Responsiveness” by Gil Tene. Gil is the CTO of Azul Systems, which is most renowned for its C4 pauseless garbage collector and associated Zing Java runtime. While the workshop was four and a half hours long, Gil also gave a 40-minute talk called “How NOT to Measure Latency” which was basically an abbreviated, less interactive version of the workshop. If you ever get the opportunity to see Gil speak or attend his workshop, I recommend you do. At the very least, do yourself a favor and watch one of his recorded talks or find his slide decks online.

Coordinated Omission on Brave New Geek

Benchmarking Message Queue Latency

Everything You Know About Latency Is Wrong