flame graph

/flaym graf/ · noun · Development · Origin: 2011

Definitions

  1. A visualization of profiled software that displays the call stack hierarchy as stacked, color-coded rectangles where width represents time spent. Created by Brendan Gregg, flame graphs make it immediately obvious which code paths consume the most CPU, memory, or I/O. The 'flame' shape comes from the jagged, fire-like edges of varying-width stack frames.

    In plain English: A visual chart showing where a program spends its time, shaped like a flame — wide bars mean more time spent, making performance bottlenecks immediately obvious.

    Example: One glance at the flame graph showed that 60% of CPU time was spent in a single JSON serialization function that was being called in a loop.

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