Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know (2007 vs 2025)

2025/12/20

Jeff & Sanjay published an updated version of the famous “Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know” from 2007. Below is a comparison of the two:

Operation 2007 2025 Speedup
L1 cache reference 0.5 ns 0.5 ns
L2 cache reference 7 ns 3 ns 2.3×
Branch mispredict 5 ns 5 ns
Mutex lock / unlock 100 ns 15 ns 6.7×
Main memory reference 100 ns 50 ns
Compress 1 KB 10 µs 1 µs 10×
Read 4 KB (storage) 20 µs (SSD)
Read 1 MB over network 10 ms (1 Gbps) 0.1 ms (100 Gbps) 100×
Read 1 MB from memory 250 µs 64 µs 3.9×
Datacenter round trip 500 µs 50 µs 10×
Disk seek 10 ms 5 ms
Read 1 MB sequentially (disk) 30 ms 10 ms
CA ↔ Netherlands ↔ CA RTT 150 ms 150 ms

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