Low Latency System

A comprehensive collection of resources for building low-latency systems.

The goal of this project is to collect resources that help engineers achieve better performance in their systems.

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Linux OS tuning

System tuning guides from server vendors

Server vendors provide their own tuning guides. Generally, these guides contain similar sections: hardware tuning, OS tuning, network tuning, and benchmark tests. Hardware tuning sections typically cover enabling high-performance mode on servers. Subtle differences can be found in the OS tuning sections.

HP

Supermicro

Dell

Lenovo

Tuning Guides from Intel and AMD

A few years ago, Intel Xeon CPUs were the only choice for low-latency systems, offering sufficient cores, CPU frequency, and cache capacity. Overclocked dual 2600-series CPUs were the mainstream solution, while some scenarios favored a single 1600-series CPU for higher frequency.

However, Xeon CPUs could only be overclocked via the base clock, limiting frequency gains to single-digit percentages. Core i5/i7 series CPUs offered higher overclocking ratios, but core counts were limited until Core i9 was released. A top Core i9 CPU like the i9-7980XE features 18 cores with 4.2 GHz turbo frequency, and some vendors can achieve 4.6+ GHz on all cores. Single-socket solutions eliminate inter-CPU latency, making i9-based servers a mainstream choice today. AMD’s EPYC CPUs now offer another competitive option.

Intel

AMD

Network Tuning Guides

Solarflare

Mellanox

Other

Benchmarks and tools

Tools

Faster than 10G network

Low Level API

Kernel bypass

Solarflare

Infiniband, RMDA

Other

Zero Copy

Time tech

Jitter detection

Additional Resources

Miscellaneous resources that may be reorganized into specific topics later.

Other

Reports & Whitepapers

FPGA

Programming languages

The choices are not so many for low latency system.

Java

C++

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