Performance Matters

Explore the challenges and solutions in software performance optimization in this 42-minute conference talk from Strange Loop. Delve into why traditional performance evaluation and optimization methods fall short on modern hardware and applications. Discover two innovative systems: Stabilizer, enabling statistically sound performance evaluation, and Coz, a causal profiler for optimizing throughput and latency in concurrent applications. Learn how these tools have led to significant performance improvements in popular software like Memcached and SQLite with minimal code changes. Gain insights into the limitations of compiler optimizations and the importance of advanced profiling techniques in the post-Moore's Law era. Follow along as the speaker, a distinguished computer science professor, shares his expertise in programming languages, runtime systems, and operating systems, focusing on transparent improvements in reliability, security, and performance.