Flame Graphs
Flame Graphs are a visualization tool for profiling software performance, typically used to analyze CPU usage, memory allocation, or other system resources. They display hierarchical call stacks as horizontal bars, where the width represents the proportion of time or resources consumed, allowing developers to quickly identify performance bottlenecks. Originally created by Brendan Gregg, they are widely used in performance engineering to diagnose issues in applications, kernels, or distributed systems.
Developers should learn Flame Graphs when optimizing application performance, debugging latency issues, or analyzing resource consumption in production environments. They are particularly useful for identifying hot code paths in CPU-bound applications, memory leaks, or I/O bottlenecks, as they provide a clear, aggregated view of where time is spent across call stacks. Use cases include profiling web servers, databases, or microservices to improve response times and reduce infrastructure costs.