Sign in

Alfonso Subiotto

@asubiotto.com
88 followers 145 following 49 posts

Engineering at polarsignals.com & investing in devtools/data/infra at lorimerventures.com | Previously tech lead at cockroachlabs.com

PostsRepliesMedia
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 18/08/2026
@polarsignals.com is joining @dash0.com! We'll be integrating continuous profiling into Dash0 and replacing ClickHouse with Great Lakes, the storage engine we built to power Polar Signals. www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Polar Signals is Joining Dash0 | Polar Signals
The next chapter for continuous profiling, our database, and the team
020
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 24/06/2026
This was a fun one! For @polarsignals.com's latest hackathon, I wrote an FSST decompression CUDA kernel and then optimized it by profiling with our new GPU PC sampling feature. www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
My Journey Optimizing a CUDA Kernel with Polar Signals | Polar Signals
A storage engineer's descent into warp stalls, memory throttles, and aligned stores
052
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 10/06/2026
If you're doing any performance work on GPUs, this is huge. PC sampling is a powerful tool for GPU optimization, but causes serial kernel executions. We've released production-ready continuous PC sampling so you can get GPU performance insights on your production workloads.
050
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 20/05/2026
New Blog Alert! Learn how we overcame eBPF limits to unwind deeply nested PyTorch training stacks and learned some cools things along the way: www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Python Zebra Stacks | Polar Signals
Unwinding Deep PyTorch Training Stacks with eBPF
012
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 06/05/2026
🤖Using Polar Signals Cloud and Claude Code to autonomously optimize your code every day! 📈 Also: Check out our new website! What do you think? www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Autonomous Optimization with Claude Code | Polar Signals
Optimize your infrastructure autonomously every day with Claude Code and Polar Signals
053
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 28/04/2026
We've been working on a major schema migration at @polarsignals.com that has unlocked some pretty wild improvements. Apart from a 50% (!!) reduction in storage size thanks to logical compression in vortex.dev, there has been a dramatic improvement in query performance.
1167
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 15/04/2026
Tired of Node.js flamecharts full of `a`, `m`, and `_0x3f2`? We just shipped source maps support for Node.js profiles in Polar Signals Cloud. Just add a plugin to your build pipeline, and your profiles show the real code. Know more: www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Do more with less. | Polar Signals
Polar Signals Cloud is an always-on, zero-instrumentation continuous profiling for CPU, GPU, and Memory that helps improve performance, understand incidents, and lower infrastructure costs.
031
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 17/02/2026
I'm happy to share that I will be speaking at #QConLondon on March 16 on deterministic simulation testing at Polar Signals. For anyone interested in attending: SPEAKER60QUK26 for £60 off
053
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 14/01/2026
Claude is down. I guess I have to learn how to code again.
130
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 08/01/2026
📢 It’s a new year so we’re announcing something new which is the Sandwich view: A way to visualize a function’s callers and callees side by side for better debugging and performance work. Read more about it here: www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Introducing the Sandwich View
A new way to visualize a function’s callers and callees side by side.
042
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 07/01/2026
My EuroRust talk has been uploaded to YT! I cover how we architected our Rust database at @polarsignals.com as a set of state machines to enable deterministic simulation testing and catch hard-to-reproduce bugs before they hit prod.
0103
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 23/12/2025
A simple 50-line code change saves us 30% of CPU across our whole infrastructure. This is the magic of system-wide profiling with @polarsignals.com. Easy to spot, easy to fix.
github.com
performance[vortex-array]: don't call is_valid to count bytes in varbinview by asubiotto · Pull Request #5814 · vortex-data/vortex
I noticed that the better blocks compressor uses count_referenced_bytes which calls is_valid on each view and results in an expensive scalar_at call. This was 30% of our system-wide CPU usage over ...
0116
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 18/12/2025
🚀 We recently announced our NVIDIA CUDA always-on profiler. Check out this blog on how to try it out super quickly with your CUDA workload today!🧊 www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Profiling NVIDIA CUDA in Kubernetes
The easiest way to get started Profiling CUDA in Kubernetes
064
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 15/12/2025
Happy to share that I've been nominated to the Vortex Technical Steering Committee! It's been fun and productive switching to Vortex from Parquet as our storage format @polarsignals.com and I'm excited to continue contributing to the Vortex project. vortex.dev/blog/novembe...
vortex.dev
November Bulletin | Vortex Blog
Overview of all work happening in Vortex
092
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 04/12/2025
🧊 New on the Polar Signals Blog — Our Delta Lake Fork Purpose-built for our continuous profiling product. In our latest post, we walk through how Delta Lake works, and the changes we've made to improve performance for our product. 👉 Read the full post: buff.ly/KwHINtO
polarsignals.com
Great Lakes: A Delta Lake Fork
Our updates to Delta Lake Table Format
072
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 25/11/2025
Sometimes an interface is so ubiquitous that performance limitations inherent to its design are just accepted. This has been our experience with Parquet. We switched to Vortex which aligned much better with our needs and saw a 70% performance improvement across the board. Read more below 👇
polarsignals.com
Do more with less. | Polar Signals
Polar Signals Cloud is an always-on, zero-instrumentation continuous profiling for CPU, GPU, and Memory that helps improve performance, understand incidents, and lower infrastructure costs.
142
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 04/11/2025
Ever wondered how your browser devtools jumps from bundle.min.js:1:27698 → src/index.ts:73:16? 🧊 We unpack the internals of JS Source Maps: Base64 VLQ encoding, mapping deltas, and how your original TS code gets reconstructed from minified bundles. 🔗 www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
The Inner Workings of JavaScript Source Maps
A deep dive into how JavaScript source maps work under the hood, with examples showing how all the pieces fit together.
074
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 22/10/2025
Introducing the world's first open source continuous NVIDIA CUDA profiler. Zero code changes required, low overhead, and always on.
040
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
aksh1618 @aksh1618.aksh.dev · 10/10/2025
Took advantage of the lunch break to replay this great talk by Alfonso Subiotto (@asubiotto.com) making the case for a State Machines based approach to Deterministic Simulation Testing, being used at @polarsignals.com, very interesting! Their inspiration for this: sled.rs/simulation
193
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 03/09/2025
We're excited to be at @rustconf.com 2025! Let's talk about profiling Rust with zero compromise! #rustconf25
0123
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 03/09/2025
We recently made some performance improvements to our Flame Graph by implementing backend pre-computation and viewport culling. Read more in our latest blog post: www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Parallel Flame Graph Rendering
How we improved our flame graph rendering by moving computation to the backend.
0105
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 26/08/2025
I wrote about why we should treat German string encoding/StringViews as Just Another Encoding™
053
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 20/08/2025
Do any database systems "columnarize" the German string encoding so rather than storing a 16-byte view for each element which includes length+prefix+pointer you'd store all lengths together, prefixes together etc...? Seems like prefix operations would be more SIMD friendly.
212
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 19/08/2025
The hardest part about writing a blog post is the introduction. Here I am, 4 hours later.
000
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 13/08/2025
Tame the OOM killer with OOMProf, the new eBPF memory profiler for Go programs being taken out by the kernels OOM killer! www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
OOMProf - Profiling on the Brink
Using eBPF to record your programs dying breathes
1124
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 07/08/2025
We're excited to share that the Parca Agent now works offline! Store CPU profiles locally when disconnected, upload when ready. Because not all computing happens in data centers. Read how we built it: www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Offline Mode for the Parca Agent
Collect and upload profiles -- even without a network connection
053
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 31/07/2025
New storage format RFC in the works 👀 Early preview:
2122
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 30/07/2025
🚀 Today, we're excited to launch Off-CPU profiling! Check out our blog on what we needed to do to make it most useful and how you can get started with it! 🧊 www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Introducing Off-CPU Profiling
How Off-CPU profiling works and how to get the most out of it
083
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 18/07/2025
@metalmatze.de built an MCP server so you can hook up your agent to your profiling data. Check it out!
020
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 08/07/2025
📔Writing our Rust database from scratch gave us a golden opportunity to implement deterministic simulation testing as a core feature. Learn about the architecture that gives us full control over DST ingredients. 🧊 www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Deterministic Simulation Testing in Rust: A Theater Of State Machines
How we designed our database for complete control over concurrency, time, randomness, and failure injection.
0229
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 08/07/2025
Writing our Rust database from scratch gave us a golden opportunity to implement deterministic simulation testing as a core feature. I wrote a blog post about the architecture that gives us full control over concurrency, time, randomness, and failure injection. (link in comment)
261
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 07/07/2025
If you're serious about performance, you need continuous profiling in your life
010
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 07/07/2025
Nice read about how maybe it's time to delete some tests (not your DST test though): andre.arko.net/2025/06/30/y...
andre.arko.net
You should delete tests
We’ve had decades of thought leadership around testing, especially coming from wholistic development philosophies like Agile, TDD, and BDD. After all that time and several supposedly superseding…
010
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Chris @chris.blue · 04/07/2025
This was a fun read. Speed runs building a cloud DB. Hill climbing the design can lead to a local maximum. Lots of lessons. Now I need to read their next post on the new one!
2142
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 04/07/2025
Looking forward to speaking at @eurorust.eu about the deterministic simulation testing we're doing at @polarsignals.com!
010
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Frederic Branczyk @brancz.com · 20/06/2025
Our very own @asubiotto.bsky.social for the first time publicly talking about the DST approach we’re taking in our new database. (Blog post coming soon as well!)
1202
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 18/06/2025
You know that urge to rewrite your database in Rust? We gave in. (Link in comment)
160
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 18/06/2025
Off to Systems Distributed. See you in Amsterdam!
021
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 12/06/2025
Quis verificabit ipsos verificatores?
000
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 10/06/2025
Claude code seems to love debugging by pointing at random code paths it doesn't understand and saying "the root cause is now clear"
010
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 04/06/2025
We've been working hard to enhance our continuous profiling for GPUs. Learn about more metrics (like PCIe throughput) and the upcoming On-GPU profiles. If you are attending ai.engineer, come and stop by our booth S18 to discuss all of these features! www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Latest in Continuous Profiling for GPUs
Attending ai.engineer 2025 in San Francisco
084
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 28/05/2025
⚡ Flamecharts/Iciclecharts are now available on all workloads, not just the Polar Signals GPU profiling experience! Check out the blog on what Flamecharts/Iciclecharts are and how to use them on Polar Signals! 🧊 www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Flamecharts: The Time-Aware Sibling of Flame Graphs
A deep dive into the time-aware visualization that complements traditional flame graphs in performance profiling.
0118
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Matthias Loibl @metalmatze.de · 26/05/2025
No biggie, just Wikimedia running Pyrra: slo.wikimedia.org 😳😎🥳 Pretty great feeling to see how far this free time project has come. Wow.
slo.wikimedia.org
Pyrra
Pyrra: Making SLOs with Prometheus manageable, accessible, and easy to use for everyone!
0112
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Bryan Cantrill @bcantrill.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Had the great pleasure tonight of being with Brown CS professor Tom Doeppner, who is retiring after an extraordinary 49 years of teaching. Tom -- and his legendary OS course, CS169 -- inspired multiple generations of practitioners. Thank you, Tom!
Brown CS professor Tom Doeppner and me at a dinner honoring Tom on his retirement
21115
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 21/05/2025
🔬 We've been researching PGO with sampling profiling data for Rust (and LLVM more generally) at Polar Signals. Check out what Tommy has found so far and stay tuned for the next posts in this series! 🧊 www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Sampling PGO
Exploring how well the various forms of PGO work
046
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 17/04/2025
🦀 Today, we're introducing the ability to attach arbitrary metadata to Profiling data with Async-Rust! Use this to attach the distributed tracing ID and more to your Profiling data! 🔍 www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
Correlate Profiling and Distributed Tracing in Async Rust
Correlate profiles with arbitrary application-specific metadata in async Rust applications
175
Alfonso Subiotto @asubiotto.com · 17/04/2025
Is it just me or does AI model quality degrade over time?
000
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Frederic Branczyk @brancz.com · 04/04/2025
Last day of #KubeCon! Come over to our booth to check out our latest GPU profiling demo and get some cool 🧊Polar Signals SWAG!
052
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Polar Signals @polarsignals.com · 26/03/2025
📢 Today on the blog: Check out how @turbopuffer.bsky.social uses Polar Signals Cloud to deliver a consistently high-performance vector search experience to their customers! 📈 www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2...
polarsignals.com
turbopuffer: Consistently High Performance at Scale
Case Study: How turbopuffer leverages Polar Signals for Continuous Profiling
021
Reposted by Alfonso Subiotto
Frederic Branczyk @brancz.com · 25/03/2025
Anyone have office space to spare for Monday in London pre-KubeCon?
105