Philippe Gaultier • 3/12/2025

Tip of the day #6: Use Bpftrace to estimate how much memory an in-memory cache will use

This article details a method for estimating the memory footprint of an in-memory LRU cache in a Go service without modifying the source code. The author demonstrates using Bpftrace (or DTrace) to attach a probe to the cache insertion function, collect a histogram of cache entry sizes, and use this data to inform configuration and Kubernetes memory limits. It covers the bpftrace command, function argument handling, and the benefits of runtime tracing for performance analysis.

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#go #Memory Profiling #Cgo