Understanding Computer Time Units, CPU Cycles and Performance Latency

The article explains that software performance is measured in milliseconds to nanoseconds, describes core hardware components—CPU, caches, and DRAM—shows how cache hierarchy speeds differ, defines a clock cycle as the basic time unit, and provides typical latency figures for operations ranging from a single CPU cycle to a full system reboot.

CPU cyclesLatencyMemory Hierarchy

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Understanding Computer Time Units, CPU Cycles and Performance Latency

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Aug 22, 2017 · Fundamentals

Why Adding Unnecessary Sorting Can Triple Your x86 Code Speed – A Deep Dive into Performance Metrics

This article explores x86 performance optimization by comparing a simple sum‑of‑array loop with and without a pre‑sort step, demonstrating how branch prediction and cache behavior can make seemingly redundant code run up to three times faster, and outlines practical benchmarking principles and common pitfalls.

BenchmarkingC ProgrammingCPU cycles

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Why Adding Unnecessary Sorting Can Triple Your x86 Code Speed – A Deep Dive into Performance Metrics