Brendan Gregg
Computer performance engineer working on datacenter performance at OpenAI, previously Netflix and Sun/Joyent. Author of Systems Performance and BPF Performance Tools, and creator of flame graphs.
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Brendan Gregg did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsThe staggering and fast-growing cost of AI datacenters is a call for performance engineering like no other in history; it's not just about saving costs - it's about saving the planet.
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Their wordsI've realized that performance engineering as we know it may not be enough - I'm thinking of new engineering methods so that we can find bigger optimizations than we have before, and find them faster.
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Their wordsgiven those technologies are proven for finding datacenter performance wins, it seems likely
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsThese would only automate about 15% of what I do as a performance engineer, and will go out of date if I'm not training it to follow industry changes.
↗On "AI Brendans" or "Virtual Brendans"brendangregg.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsIf a company spends less on performance engineers as it's considered AI'd, it will reduce the company's effective "performance IQ."
↗On "AI Brendans" or "Virtual Brendans"brendangregg.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Widespread AI-driven performance tuning agents will meaningfully reduce global energy waste.
Their wordsIn future there will be AI performance agents that can be run on everything, helping to save the planet by reducing energy usage.
↗On "AI Brendans" or "Virtual Brendans"brendangregg.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 6 days earlier
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Their wordsIf you are in regular meetings with a hardware vendor as a customer (or potential customer) you can accomplish a lot by providing firm and tough feedback, particularly with Intel today.
↗Intel is listening, don't waste your shotbrendangregg.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsIt isn't easy dealing with peer pressure and a room of warm and friendly staff begging you say something, anything nice about their terrible product for fear of losing their jobs -- and realizing you must be brutal to their faces otherwise you're not helping the vendor or your own company.
↗Intel is listening, don't waste your shotbrendangregg.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 5 days earlier
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Their wordsYou need all three stages to reach the highest, and most competitive, performance.
↗Third Stage Engineeringbrendangregg.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsThe most accurate and realistic evaluation for HW involves selecting the best software and then tuning it, and doing this for all HW options.
↗Third Stage Engineeringbrendangregg.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
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Their wordsA new performance team can likely find enough optimizations to halve infrastructure spend in their first couple of years, even for companies that have been using commercial performance or observability tools.
↗When to Hire a Computer Performance Engineering Team (2025) part 1 of 2brendangregg.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsOne performance anti-pattern is when a company, to debug one performance problem, installs a monitoring tool that periodically does work and causes application latency outliers.
↗When to Hire a Computer Performance Engineering Team (2025) part 1 of 2brendangregg.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsAny performance test should be accompanied by an explanation of the limiting factor, since no explanation will reveal the test wasn't analyzed and the result may be bogus.
↗When to Hire a Computer Performance Engineering Team (2025) part 1 of 2brendangregg.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 2 months earlier
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Our reading
Remote workers are often passed over for opportunities in favor of less-qualified local colleagues
Their wordsOpportunities can be given to local workers despite the remote worker being more qualified, or even number one in the world in that area.
↗3 Years of Extremely Remote Workbrendangregg.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
Giving local staff authority over more-qualified remote workers reduces a company's competitiveness
Their wordsthere's a power imbalance: the local worker is in charge and doesn't have to listen. This reduces company competitiveness.
↗3 Years of Extremely Remote Workbrendangregg.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsThis is getting easier in the lastest versions of Fedora and Ubuntu (e.g., Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) which are shipping system libraries with frame pointers by default.
↗Doom GPU Flame Graphsbrendangregg.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsThey do have flame graphs in Nsight Graphics for GPU workloads, although their flame graphs are currently shallow as it is GPU code only, and onerous to use as I believe it requires an interposer; on the plus side they have click-to-source.
↗Doom GPU Flame Graphsbrendangregg.com 2nd of 2 in this piece