Latency

10 Asynchronous processing

This chapter covers

• Comparing asynchronous and synchronous processing
• Understanding the event loop
• Hiding latency with async I/O and deferring work
• Handling errors in async systems
• Observing async systems

Throughout the book, we’ve built a comprehensive understanding of latency optimization. In part 1, we established the foundations by exploring the fundamental nature of latency, why it’s so important, and essential techniques for modeling and measuring it. In part 2, we explored data-centric latency optimization strategies, such as partitioning and caching, and in part 3, we explored code-level techniques to reduce latency.

In this part of the book, we’ll turn our attention to hiding latency. This approach ...