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"Performance (Really) Matters" with Emery Berger

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) · talk · Watch on YouTube

Software performance & optimizationCompilers, interpreters & program analysis

What it is

Emery Berger argues that performance is hard to measure and deliver on modern systems, showing how code layout and link order can swamp optimization effects. He presents tools that evaluate performance more reliably.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN points to it whenever benchmarking pitfalls and layout effects come up, as an eye-opening talk on how unreliable naive measurements are.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2022, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “I highly recommend it. It's mind blowing, but also terrifying”

    Reveals common mistakes in measuring performance

    reitzensteinm, 2024-01 · Strong recommendation · in “When Optimising Code, Measure”

  2. “He paints a really, really depressing picture of how unreliable benchmarks truly are.”

    Shows how unreliable benchmarks are, e.g. link order effects

    vanderZwan, 2022-12 · Recommendation · in “Fast memcpy, A System Design”

  3. “you would enjoy this work by Emery Berger.”

    Emery Berger's work on performance analysis by injecting slowness

    sitkack, 2025-01 · Recommendation · in “Disabling Zen 5's Op Cache and Exploring Its Clustered Decoder”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: benchmarking, code layout, compilers, profiling, systems

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