Brendan Gregg's Blog

It's an exciting time for developments in computer performance, not just for the BPF technology (which I often write about) but also for processors with 3D stacking and cloud vendor CPUs (e.g., AWS Graviton2); for memory with the arrival of DDR5 and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) on-processor; for storage including new uses for 3D Xpoint as a 3D NAND accelerator; for networking with the rise of QUIC and eXpress Data Path (XDP); and so on. I summarized these topics and more as a plenary conference talk, including my own predictions (as a senior performance engineer) for the future of computing performance, with a focus on back-end servers.

The video is on youtube:

The slides are here or as a PDF:

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I work on many areas of performance, but recently I've had a lot of demand to talk about BPF. This was a chance to talk about other things I've been working on, such as the present and future of hardware performance. I also wrote about these topics in detail for my recent Systems Performance 2nd Edition book.

Note that my predictions in this talk may be wrong, but they should be thought-provoking. I hope you enjoy it!

References

I've reproduced the talk references below, so you can click on links:

• [Gregg 08] Brendan Gregg, “ZFS L2ARC,” http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2008-07-22/zfs-l2arc.html, Jul 2008
• [Gregg 10] Brendan Gregg, “Visualizations for Performance Analysis (and More),” https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa10/visualizations-performance-analysis-and-more, 2010
• [Greenberg 11] Marc Greenberg, “DDR4: Double the speed, double the latency? Make sure your system can handle next-generation DRAM,” https://www.chipestimate.com/DDR4-Double-the-speed-double-the-latencyMake-sure-your-system-can-handle-next-generation-DRAM/Cadence/Technical-Article/2011/11/22, Nov 2011
• [Hruska 12] Joel Hruska, “The future of CPU scaling: Exploring options on the cutting edge,” https://www.extremetech.com/computing/184946-14nm-7nm-5nm-how-low-can-cmos-go-it-depends-if-you-ask-the-engineers-or-the-economists, Feb 2012
• [Gregg 13] Brendan Gregg, “Blazing Performance with Flame Graphs,” https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/technical-sessions/plenary/gregg, 2013
• [Shimpi 13] Anand Lal Shimpi, “Seagate to Ship 5TB HDD in 2014 using Shingled Magnetic Recording,” https://www.anandtech.com/show/7290/seagate-to-ship-5tb-hdd-in-2014-using-shingled-magnetic-recording, Sep 2013
• [Borkmann 14] Daniel Borkmann, “net: tcp: add DCTCP congestion control algorithm,” https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=e3118e8359bb7c59555aca60c725106e6d78c5ce, 2014
• [Macri 15] Joe Macri, “Introducing HBM,” https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/hbm, Jul 2015
• [Cardwell 16] Neal Cardwell, et al., “BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control,” https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184, 2016
• [Gregg 16] Brendan Gregg, “Unikernel Profiling: Flame Graphs from dom0,” http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-01-27/unikernel-profiling-from-dom0.html, Jan 2016
• [Gregg 16b] Brendan Gregg, “Linux 4.X Tracing Tools: Using BPF Superpowers,” https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa16/conference-program/presentation/linux-4x-tracing-tools-using-bpf-superpowers, 2016
• [Alcorn 17] Paul Alcorn, “Seagate To Double HDD Speed With Multi-Actuator Technology,” https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hdd-multi-actuator-heads-seagate,36132.html, 2017
• [Alcorn 17b] Paul Alcorn, “Hot Chips 2017: Intel Deep Dives Into EMIB,” https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-emib-interconnect-fpga-chiplet,35316.html#xenforo-comments-3112212, 2017
• [Corbet 17] Jonathan Corbet, “Two new block I/O schedulers for 4.12,” https://lwn.net/Articles/720675, Apr 2017
• [Gregg 17] Brendan Gregg, “AWS EC2 Virtualization 2017: Introducing Nitro,” http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-29/aws-ec2-virtualization-2017.html, Nov 2017
• [Russinovich 17] Mark Russinovich, “Inside the Microsoft FPGA-based configurable cloud,” https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/inside-microsoft-fpga-based-configurable-cloud, 2017
• [Gregg 18] Brendan Gregg, “Linux Performance 2018,” http://www.brendangregg.com/Slides/Percona2018_Linux_Performance.pdf, 2018
• [Hady 18] Frank Hady, “Achieve Consistent Low Latency for Your Storage-Intensive Workloads,” https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/optane-technology/low-latency-for-storage-intensive-workloads-article-brief.html, 2018
• [Joshi 18] Amit Joshi, et al., “Titus, the Netflix container management platform, is now open source,” https://netflixtechblog.com/titus-the-netflix-container-management-platform-is-now-open-source-f868c9fb5436, Apr 2018
• [Cutress 19] Dr. Ian Cutress, “Xilinx Announces World Largest FPGA: Virtex Ultrascale+ VU19P with 9m Cells,” https://www.anandtech.com/show/14798/xilinx-announces-world-largest-fpga-virtex-ultrascale-vu19p-with-9m-cells, Aug 2019
• [Gallatin 19] Drew Gallatin, “Kernel TLS and hardware TLS offload in FreeBSD 13,” https://people.freebsd.org/~gallatin/talks/euro2019-ktls.pdf, 2019
• [Redestad 19] Claes Redestad, Staffan Friberg, Aleksey Shipilev, “JEP 230: Microbenchmark Suite,” http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/230, updated 2019
• [Bearman 20] Ian Bearman, “Exploring Profile Guided Optimization of the Linux Kernel,” https://linuxplumbersconf.org/event/7/contributions/771, 2020
• [Burnes 20] Andrew Burnes, “GeForce RTX 30 Series Graphics Cards: The Ultimate Play,” https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/introducing-rtx-30-series-graphics-cards, Sep 2020
• [Charlene 20] Charlene, “800G Is Coming: Set Pace to More Higher Speed Applications,” https://community.fs.com/blog/800-gigabit-ethernet-and-optics.html, May 2020
• [Cutress 20] Dr. Ian Cutress, “Insights into DDR5 Sub-timings and Latencies,” https://www.anandtech.com/show/16143/insights-into-ddr5-subtimings-and-latencies, Oct 2020
• [Ford 20] A. Ford, et al., “TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple Addresses,” https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8684, Mar 2020
• [Gregg 20] Brendan Gregg, “Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud, Second Edition,” Addison-Wesley, 2020
• [Hruska 20] Joel Hruska, “Intel Demos PCIe 5.0 on Upcoming Sapphire Rapids CPUs,” https://www.extremetech.com/computing/316257-intel-demos-pcie-5-0-on-upcoming-sapphire-rapids-cpus, Oct 2020
• [Liu 20] Linda Liu, “Samsung QVO vs EVO vs PRO: What’s the Difference? [Clone Disk],” https://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/samsung-qvo-vs-evo.html, 2020
• [Moore 20] Samuel K. Moore, “A Better Way to Measure Progress in Semiconductors,” https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/a-better-way-to-measure-progress-in-semiconductors, Jul 2020
• [Peterson 20] Zachariah Peterson, “DDR5 vs. DDR6: Here's What to Expect in RAM Modules,” https://resources.altium.com/p/ddr5-vs-ddr6-heres-what-expect-ram-modules, Nov 2020
• [Salter 20] Jim Salter, “Western Digital releases new 18TB, 20TB EAMR drives,” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/07/western-digital-releases-new-18tb-20tb-eamr-drives, Jul 2020
• [Spier 20] Martin Spier, Brendan Gregg, et al., “FlameScope,” https://github.com/Netflix/flamescope, 2020
• [Tolvanen 20] Sami Tolvanen, Bill Wendling, and Nick Desaulniers, “LTO, PGO, and AutoFDO in the Kernel,” Linux Plumber’s Conference, https://linuxplumbersconf.org/event/7/contributions/798, 2020
• [Vega 20] Juan Camilo Vega, Marco Antonio Merlini, Paul Chow, “FFShark: A 100G FPGA Implementation of BPF Filtering for Wireshark,” IEEE 28th Annual International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), 2020
• [Warren 20] Tom Warren, “Microsoft reportedly designing its own ARM-based chips for servers and Surface PCs,” https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/18/22189450/microsoft-arm-processors-chips-servers-surface-report, Dec 2020
• [Google 21] Google, “Cloud TPU,” https://cloud.google.com/tpu, 2021
• [Haken 21] Michael Haken, et al., “Delta Lake 1S Server Design Specification 1v05, https://www.opencompute.org/documents/delta-lake-1s-server-design-specification-1v05-pdf, 2021
• [Intel 21] Intel corporation, “Intel® OptaneTM Technology,” https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/storage/optane-technology-brief.html, 2021
• [Quach 21a] Katyanna Quach, “Global chip shortage probably won't let up until 2023, warns TSMC: CEO 'still expects capacity to tighten more',” https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/16/tsmc_chip_forecast, Apr 2021
• [Quach 21b] Katyanna Quach, “IBM says it's built the world's first 2nm semiconductor chips,” https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/06/ibm_2nm_semiconductor_chips, May 2021
• [Ridley 21] Jacob Ridley, “IBM agrees with Intel and TSMC: this chip shortage isn't going to end anytime soon,” https://www.pcgamer.com/ibm-agrees-with-intel-and-tsmc-this-chip-shortage-isnt-going-to-end-anytime-soon, May 2021
• [Shilov 21] Anton Shilov, “Samsung Develops 512GB DDR5 Module with HKMG DDR5 Chips,” https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-512gb-ddr5-memory-module, Mar 2021
• [Shilov 21b] Anton Shilov, “Seagate Ships 20TB HAMR HDDs Commercially, Increases Shipments of Mach.2 Drives,” https://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-ships-hamr-hdds-increases-dual-actuator-shipments, 2021
• [Shilov 21c] Anton Shilov, “SK Hynix Envisions 600-Layer 3D NAND & EUV-Based DRAM,” https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sk-hynix-600-layer-3d-nand-euv-dram, Mar 2021
• [Shilov 21d] Anton Shilov, “Sapphire Rapids Uncovered: 56 Cores, 64GB HBM2E, Multi-Chip Design,” https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-sapphire-rapids-xeon-scalable-specifications-and-features, Apr 2021
• [SuperMicro 21] SuperMicro, “B12SPE-CPU-25G (For SuperServer Only),” https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/B12SPE-CPU-25G, 2021
• [Thaler 21] Dave Thaler, Poorna Gaddehosur, “Making eBPF work on Windows,” https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2021/05/10/making-ebpf-work-on-windows, May 2021
• [TornadoVM 21] TornadoVM, “TornadoVM Run your software faster and simpler!” https://www.tornadovm.org, 2021
• [Trader 21] Tiffany Trader, “Cerebras Second-Gen 7nm Wafer Scale Engine Doubles AI Performance Over First-Gen Chip,” https://www.enterpriseai.news/2021/04/21/latest-cerebras-second-gen-7nm-wafer-scale-engine-doubles-ai-performance-over-first-gen-chip, Apr 2021
• [Vahdat 21] Amin Vahdat, “The past, present and future of custom compute at Google,” https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/systems/the-past-present-and-future-of-custom-compute-at-google, Mar 2021
• [Wikipedia 21] “Semiconductor device fabrication,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication, 2021
• [Wikipedia 21b] “Silicon,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon, 2021
• [ZonedStorage 21] Zoned Storage, “Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) SSDs,” https://zonedstorage.io/introduction/zns, 2021

I've taken care to cite the author names along with the talk title and date, including for Internet sources, instead of the common practice of just listing URLs. I followed that practice when writing some earlier books, and it has since struck me as unfair that some references had author names and some didn't. Nowadays I always include full names when known.

In case you are interested, at the same conference I also gave a talk on BPF Internals.