Slow screens sink careers. Why is your code still crawling? Hidden queues, chatty APIs, mis-placed data, every microsecond adds up. Latency steals user trust before logs even load. Stop guessing, start measuring, model every millisecond that matters. Feel the thrill of instant responses across servers and clients. Own the speed conversation at your next review.
- Latency foundations clarified: Spot myths, define true delay, plan realistic performance targets.
- Benchmark harness in Rust: Capture, visualize, and compare microsecond-level metrics with confidence.
- Data colocation and partitioning: Restructure storage to cut round-trips and boost throughput.
- Caching and hiding latency: Keep users happy even when reduction is impossible.
- Cross-stack insights: Operating systems, databases, networks, all decoded for everyday engineers.
Latency: Reduce Delay in Software Systems by seasoned engineer Pekka Enberg combines deep systems insight with Rust-driven examples to create an authoritative, developer-friendly playbook for low-latency software.
Step-by-step projects move from modeling delay to shaving microseconds in real APIs. Each chapter blends theory, code walkthroughs, and war-story wisdom that sticks. Expect diagrams, benchmarks, and checklists you can reuse tomorrow.
Finish the book ready to diagnose any slowdown, choose the right fix, and defend your decisions with clear metrics. Your software and reputation will run faster.
Ideal for backend and distributed-systems developers comfortable with Rust or similar languages, and performance-minded team leads.
Table of Contents:
PART 1: BASICS
1 INTRODUCTION
2 MODELING AND MEASURING LATENCY
PART 2: DATA
3 COLOCATION
4 REPLICATION
5 PARTITIONING
6 CACHING
PART 3: COMPUTE
7 ELIMINATING WORK
8 WAIT-FREE SYNCHRONIZATION
9 EXPLOITING CONCURRENCY
PART 4: HIDING LATENCY
10 ASYNCHRONOUS PROCESSING
11 PREDICTIVE TECHNIQUES
APPENDIX
APPENDIX A: A. FURTHER READING
About the Author :
Pekka Enberg is a system engineer and former Linux-kernel maintainer known for eliminating microsecond bottlenecks. With experience across operating systems, databases, and large-scale distributed stacks, Pekka brings pragmatic clarity to every page. He distills deep performance expertise into actionable guidance that helps developers build faster software today.
Review :
- The book covers most of the important topics including partitioning, replication, caching and OS level optimizations. It covers both software and hardware details to understand what contributes to latency and how it can be improved.
Shubham Patel, Senior Software Engineer, Apple
- I miss books like this (well organized and a fair mix of practical examples, analogies and theory). I am looking forward to having a copy on my bookshelf.’
Artur Baruchi, Senior Software Engineer, Heo
