Netflix recently announced bpftop, a command-line utility aimed at improving the optimization and monitoring of eBPF programs. bpftop provides a real-time snapshot of an eBPF program. It displays metrics such as the average duration of program execution, the number of events processed each second, and the approximate percentage of total CPU usage for each program. With this tool, Netflix is set to take advantage of eBPF’s capabilities.
Jose Fernandez, a senior software engineer at Netflix, elaborated on the announcement in a blog post. bpftop uses BPF_ENABLE_STATS command to start collecting important performance data from the eBPF program. This data collection is turned off to keep your computer running smoothly. bpftop collects this data and calculates useful information. The collected data is displayed in a table similar to the command above or as a graph that is updated every 10 seconds. When bpftop stops running, it also stops collecting statistics. This tool is built using the Rust programming language and uses the libbpf-rs and ratatui packages for its functionality.
Source: bpftop Announcement: Simplifying eBPF Performance Optimization
Furthermore, bpftop simplifies the process of improving the performance of eBPF programs, easing the loop of benchmarking, code improvement, and getting instant feedback. Without bpftop, optimizing these programs would involve manual calculations. However, bpftop allows users to easily set benchmarks, make improvements, and validate those improvements, making the whole process efficient.
An important feature of this tool is that it can display statistics as graphs over time, which helps spot patterns and trends.
Originally, BPF was an acronym for Berkeley Packet Filter. However, according to ebpf.io, the capabilities of eBPF (Extended BPF) have expanded beyond mere packet filtering, rendering the original acronym obsolete. However, the term BPF is used in the Linux source code. In various tools and documentation, BPF and eBPF are often used interchangeably. Today, eBPF is used in a variety of scenarios, including improving networking and load balancing in modern data centers and cloud environments, offering detailed security data at minimal cost, and helping developers monitor applications, among other things.
Fernandez noted that while Netflix has integrated eBPF into its performance engineering through tools like Vector and the Flow Exporter sidecar, with bpftop, Netflix is trying to find a balance between the benefits of eBPF and the load it places on the system.
The tech community took note of the bpftop announcement he made Netflix Engineering account on X.com, with 223 reposts and 1.2k likes. The Hacker News post received significant engagement from the tech community. User bschuur shared his positive experience with the tool on his eBPF code project, noting its effectiveness. Consequently, the tool has been recognized as valuable enough to be considered a key addition to their toolkit.
For additional information on using the tool, readers are encouraged to visit the project’s GitHub page. Bpftop is available under the Apache 2 license as an open source project, and community contributions are welcome.