Berlin Buzzwords 2025

Delay accounting: an underrated feature of the Linux kernel
2025-06-17 , Palais Atelier

This talk delves into delay accounting, an often-overlooked feature that provides valuable insights into CPU time shortages and application latency. Attendees will learn how to leverage these kernel metrics for better performance analysis and system optimization.


Understanding whether a process is truly starved of CPU time isn’t as simple as looking at traditional metrics like CPU usage or Load Average. Few realize that the Linux kernel has built-in mechanisms to precisely measure how long each task waits for kernel resources. This talk delves into delay accounting, an often-overlooked feature that provides valuable insights into CPU time shortages and application latency. Attendees will learn how to leverage these kernel metrics for better performance analysis and system optimization.


Tags:

Search, Data Science

Level:

Intermediate

Nikolay Sivko, co-founder and CEO of Coroot, aims to simplify troubleshooting in production for developers. He is passionate about Site Reliability Engineering practices, observability, and open source. Previously, he was the head of the Engineering group at a large technology company and founded an observability tool development company in Russia, which he successfully acquired. Currently, he resides in Turkey, focusing on developing a startup with an international market orientation.