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Last active March 4, 2026 02:16
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Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know
Latency Comparison Numbers (~2012)
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L1 cache reference 0.5 ns
Branch mispredict 5 ns
L2 cache reference 7 ns 14x L1 cache
Mutex lock/unlock 25 ns
Main memory reference 100 ns 20x L2 cache, 200x L1 cache
Compress 1K bytes with Zippy 3,000 ns 3 us
Send 1K bytes over 1 Gbps network 10,000 ns 10 us
Read 4K randomly from SSD* 150,000 ns 150 us ~1GB/sec SSD
Read 1 MB sequentially from memory 250,000 ns 250 us
Round trip within same datacenter 500,000 ns 500 us
Read 1 MB sequentially from SSD* 1,000,000 ns 1,000 us 1 ms ~1GB/sec SSD, 4X memory
Disk seek 10,000,000 ns 10,000 us 10 ms 20x datacenter roundtrip
Read 1 MB sequentially from disk 20,000,000 ns 20,000 us 20 ms 80x memory, 20X SSD
Send packet CA->Netherlands->CA 150,000,000 ns 150,000 us 150 ms
Notes
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1 ns = 10^-9 seconds
1 us = 10^-6 seconds = 1,000 ns
1 ms = 10^-3 seconds = 1,000 us = 1,000,000 ns
Credit
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By Jeff Dean: http://research.google.com/people/jeff/
Originally by Peter Norvig: http://norvig.com/21-days.html#answers
Contributions
-------------
'Humanized' comparison: https://gist.github.com/hellerbarde/2843375
Visual comparison chart: http://i.imgur.com/k0t1e.png
Interactive Prezi version: https://prezi.com/pdkvgys-r0y6/latency-numbers-for-programmers-web-development/latency.txt
@fujohnwang
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以讹传讹,有个数据明显不对..

@jdnichollsc
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Wondering which chips and OS are you using here to calculate that latency

@Hawzen
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Hawzen commented Oct 1, 2025

Send 1K bytes over 1 Gbps network

1Gbps is a measure of bandwidth and is irrelevant to latency

@tris
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tris commented Feb 23, 2026

@Hawzen

1Gbps is a measure of bandwidth and is irrelevant to latency

1Gbps = 1,000,000,000 bits/sec
1KB = 1024 bytes = 1024 x 8 = 8192 bits
8192 bits / 1,000,000,000 bps = 0.00000819 seconds (aka 8.192 µs, or 8192 ns)

That's before TCP, IPv4, Ethernet headers and other framing on the wire -- not quite 10,000 ns but close enough.

Stuart Cheshire's Latency and the Quest for Interactivity paper is still excellent 30 years later. It digs into serialization delays a fair bit (albeit with much smaller numbers). Well worth a read.

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