Linux perf Flame Graphs: Visualize CPU Hotspots
Flame graphs are the fastest way to find CPU bottlenecks, but most people use them wrong by not understanding what the width of a flame actually means.
Perf Articles
50 articles
Linux perf Getting Started: First Profiling in 5 Minutes
The real magic of perf isn't just that it can count events; it's that it lets you sample program execution at hardware interrupt rates, giving you a sta.
Linux perf Go Profiling: Profile Golang Applications
Go's perf is surprisingly powerful for profiling, but most people treat it like a black box, missing its deepest insights.
Linux perf Intel PT: Hardware-Assisted Instruction Tracing
Intel Processor Trace PT is a hardware feature that records the execution flow of a program, allowing for incredibly detailed post-mortem analysis of wh.
Linux perf I/O Latency: Profile Block Device Performance
Linux perf can deeply profile block device I/O latency by tracing kernel events related to I/O submission, completion, and queueing.
Linux perf IPC: Instructions Per Cycle Analysis
Linux perf can tell you how many instructions your CPU is executing per clock cycle, a key indicator of how efficiently your code is running.
Linux perf JVM Profiling: Profile Java Applications
Java applications can be notoriously difficult to profile effectively, often leading to assumptions about performance bottlenecks that are simply wrong.
Linux perf Kernel Events: Trace Kernel Functions
The perf command in Linux is a powerful tool for performance analysis, and a common use case is tracing kernel functions to understand what the operatin.
Linux perf Kubernetes: Profile Pods and Containers
The perf tool on Linux is an incredibly powerful, low-overhead profiler, but using it directly on Kubernetes pods requires a few tricks to bridge the ga.
Linux perf LBR: Last Branch Records for Call Traces
Linux perf uses Last Branch Records LBR to reconstruct call traces for specific events, providing insights into program execution flow.
Linux perf Lock Contention: Find Mutex Bottlenecks
perf is showing lock contention, and you're seeing mutex events. This means threads are waiting to acquire a lock that another thread already holds, and.
Linux perf Memory: Profile Memory Access Patterns
Linux perf Memory: Profile Memory Access Patterns — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
Linux perf Network: Profile Network Stack Performance
The Linux perf tool, often seen as a low-level CPU profiler, is surprisingly powerful for digging into network stack performance issues.
Linux perf Node.js Profiling: V8 JIT Code Analysis
Linux perf Node.js Profiling: V8 JIT Code Analysis — The perf tool, when pointed at a Node.js process, can give you a surprisingly low-level view of V8's.
Linux perf NUMA: Detect Remote Memory Access Penalties
NUMA nodes are physical groupings of CPUs and memory on a server. When a CPU on one NUMA node accesses memory attached to another NUMA node, it's a "rem.
Linux perf Paranoid Level: Configure Access Permissions
perf is a powerful Linux performance analysis tool, but it often requires elevated privileges to gather detailed system-wide performance data.
Linux perf PMU: Hardware Performance Counter Events
Linux perf can access hardware performance counters PMUs to give you a window into what your CPU is actually doing, beyond just instructions and cycles.
Linux perf Production: Low-Overhead Sampling in Prod
Linux perf Production: Low-Overhead Sampling in Prod — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
Linux perf Python: Profile Python Applications
Linux perf Python: Profile Python Applications — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
Linux perf Script: Automate Analysis with Python
Linux perf Script: Automate Analysis with Python — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
Linux perf record: Sample Events and Stack Traces
Linux perf record: Sample Events and Stack Traces. perf record can drop samples under high CPU load, leading to incomplete performance profiles. 1
Linux perf report: Analyze Profiling Data Interactively
Linux perf report: Analyze Profiling Data Interactively — perf report is the interactive viewer for perf data. Let's see it in action. Imagine we've pro...
Linux perf Rust Profiling: Profile Rust Applications
Rust applications are surprisingly hard to profile with perf, and it's not because Rust itself is inherently slow to profile.
Linux perf Scheduler: Profile Task Scheduling
The Linux perf scheduler events can reveal when and why your tasks are getting scheduled and unscheduled, which is crucial for understanding performance.
Linux perf script: Custom Output Format for Analysis
perf script can dump raw event data, but it's often a firehose. You need to tailor its output to see the signal in the noise
Linux perf Security: Configure Safe Profiling Access
Linux perf Security: Configure Safe Profiling Access — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
Linux perf Software Events: Track Page Faults and More
Linux perf can tell you about page faults, but it's not just about counting them; it's about understanding why they're happening and how much they're co.
Linux perf ARM SPE: Statistical Profiling Extension
ARM's Statistical Profiling Extension SPE is a hardware feature that lets you sample program execution at a very fine-grained level without significantl.
Linux perf stat: Measure CPU Performance Counters
perf stat isn't just about counting instructions; it's your window into the CPU's internal dance, revealing bottlenecks you'd never find with top.
Linux perf TLB Shootdowns: Detect Multi-Core TLB Costs
The perf tool can reveal that your system is spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with TLB shootdowns, which is a symptom of inter-core communi.
Linux perf top: Real-Time CPU Hotspot Profiling
perf top is not just a sampling profiler; it's a real-time, interactive performance analysis tool that can pinpoint CPU hotspots with surgical precision.
Linux perf Tracepoints: Trace Kernel Subsystem Events
Tracepoints are the Linux kernel's built-in hooks for observing specific events, allowing tools like perf to gain deep visibility into subsystem behavio.
Linux perf uprobes: Trace User-Space Function Calls
perf's uprobe feature lets you instrument user-space code as if it were kernel code, giving you unparalleled visibility into application behavior withou.
Linux perf KVM: Profile Virtual Machine Performance
perf can inspect KVM guest execution, showing you exactly where your virtual machine is spending its CPU cycles, even when those cycles are spent in the.
Linux perf vs eBPF: Choose the Right Tracing Tool
Linux perf and eBPF are both powerful tracing and profiling tools, but they operate on fundamentally different principles, making one a better choice th.
perf vs gprof: Modern vs Classic Linux Profiling
perf vs gprof: Modern vs Classic Linux Profiling — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
perf vs Valgrind: Sampling vs Instrumentation Profiling
Sampling profilers like perf are surprisingly more effective than instrumentation profilers like Valgrind for understanding real-world performance bottl.
Linux perf annotate: Link Hot Code to Source Lines
The perf annotate command in Linux is a powerful tool for performance analysis, but its output can be cryptic without context.
Linux perf Benchmarking: Compare Before and After
The perf tool in Linux isn't just for finding bottlenecks; it's a powerful way to quantitatively prove that your changes actually made a difference, or .
Linux perf Branch Mispredictions: Fix Prediction Misses
This error means the CPU's branch predictor is frequently guessing wrong about which path to take in your code, causing it to stall and waste cycles.
Linux perf Cache Misses: Diagnose L1/L2/L3 Misses
The Linux perf tool can tell you exactly which CPU cache levels L1, L2, L3 are missing the data your program needs, and it's often a bottleneck you didn.
Linux perf Call Graphs: Build Full Stack Profiles
The perf tool on Linux isn't just for counting events; it's a powerful profiler that can reconstruct the full call stack, showing you exactly which func.
Linux perf Cheatsheet: Every Command You Need
The perf command in Linux is a powerful, low-level profiling tool that can give you incredibly granular insights into your system's performance.
Linux perf Profiling Workflow: Full Analysis Guide
The Linux perf tool is a powerful, built-in profiler that can give you deep insights into your system's performance, but its true strength lies in under.
Linux perf in Docker: Profile Containerized Apps
Linux perf in Docker: Profile Containerized Apps — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
Linux perf Context Switches: Profile Scheduler Activity
Linux perf Context Switches: Profile Scheduler Activity — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
Linux perf CPU Migrations: Detect Cross-CPU Scheduling
The Linux perf tool can detect cross-CPU scheduling events, revealing when a process or thread is moved between different CPU cores by the operating sys.
Linux perf CPU Profiling: Find Hotspots Efficiently
Linux perf can tell you exactly which instructions your CPU is spending time on, but most people use it to just list symbols, missing the forest for the.
Linux perf Data Files: Record, Read, and Analyze
Linux perf Data Files: Record, Read, and Analyze — practical guide covering perf setup, configuration, and troubleshooting with real-world examples.
Linux perf kprobes: Dynamic Kernel Tracepoints
Linux perf's kprobes let you instrument the kernel on the fly, without recompiling or rebooting, by dynamically inserting probes into kernel functions.