Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@jboner
jboner / latency.txt
Last active December 10, 2025 12:19
Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know
Latency Comparison Numbers (~2012)
----------------------------------
L1 cache reference 0.5 ns
Branch mispredict 5 ns
L2 cache reference 7 ns 14x L1 cache
Mutex lock/unlock 25 ns
Main memory reference 100 ns 20x L2 cache, 200x L1 cache
Compress 1K bytes with Zippy 3,000 ns 3 us
Send 1K bytes over 1 Gbps network 10,000 ns 10 us
Read 4K randomly from SSD* 150,000 ns 150 us ~1GB/sec SSD
@peternixey
peternixey / securing_rails_updates.md
Created March 5, 2012 13:10
How Homakov hacked GitHub and how to protect your application by Peter Nixey

##How Homakov hacked GitHub and the line of code that could have prevented it


Please note: THIS ARTICLE IS NOT WRITTEN BY THE GITHUB TEAM or in any way associated with them. It's simply hosted as a Gist because the markdown formatting is excellent and far clearer than anything I could manage on my personal Tumblr at peternixey.com.

If you'd like to follow me on twitter my handle is @peternixey