Latency numbers every programmer should know

latency.txt

L1 cache reference                  0.5 ns ||  5.0 × 10^-10 seconds
Branch mispredict                   5 ns ||  5.0 × 10^-9 seconds
L2 cache reference                  7 ns ||  7.0 × 10^-9 seconds
Mutex lock/unlock                   25 ns ||  2.5 × 10^-8 seconds
Main memory reference               100 ns ||  1.0 × 10^-7 seconds
Compress 1K bytes with Zippy        3,000 ns ||  3.0 × 10^-6 seconds
Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps network   20,000 ns ||  2.0 × 10^-5 seconds
Read 1 MB sequentially from memory  250,000 ns || 0.00025 seconds
Round trip within same datacenter   500,000 ns || 0.00050 seconds
Disk seek                           10,000,000 ns || 0.01 seconds
Read 1 MB sequentially from disk    20,000,000 ns || 0.02 seconds
Send packet CA->Netherlands->CA     150,000,000 ns || 0.15 seconds

By Jeff Dean (http://research.google.com/people/jeff/):