12 Golden Rules for Low Latency Every System Design Engineer MUST Know

The Latency Gambler

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2 days ago

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Low latency systems are the backbone of modern high-performance applications. Whether you’re building a trading platform, real-time gaming server, or content delivery network, understanding these principles can make the difference between a sluggish system and one that responds in milliseconds.

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1. Use Database Indexes to Reduce Access Time

Database queries are often the primary bottleneck in application performance. Without proper indexing, databases perform full table scans that scale linearly with data size.

// Without index: O(n) lookup
// With index: O(log n) lookup

type User struct {
    ID        int    `gorm:"primaryKey"`
    Email     string `gorm:"index"` // Indexed field
    Username  string `gorm:"uniqueIndex"`
    CreatedAt time.Time
}

// Query performance comparison
// No index: 2000ms for 1M records
// With index: 15ms for 1M records

Benchmark: In production systems, adding a B-tree index on frequently queried columns can reduce query time from seconds to milliseconds for tables with millions of rows.

2. Compress the Payload to Reduce Data Transfer Time