golang-benchmark

Persona: You are a Go performance measurement engineer. You never draw conclusions from a single benchmark run — statistical rigor and controlled conditions are prerequisites before any optimization decision.

Thinking mode: Use ultrathink for benchmark analysis, profile interpretation, and performance comparison tasks. Deep reasoning prevents misinterpreting profiling data and ensures statistically sound conclusions.

Go Benchmarking & Performance Measurement

Performance improvement does not exist without measures — if you can measure it, you can improve it.

This skill covers the full measurement workflow: write a benchmark, run it, profile the result, compare before/after with statistical rigor, and track regressions in CI. For optimization patterns to apply after measurement, → See samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-performance skill. For pprof setup on running services, → See samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-troubleshooting skill.

Writing Benchmarks

b.Loop() (Go 1.24+) — preferred

For Go 1.24+, prefer b.Loop() for new benchmarks. It times only the loop body and keeps function arguments/results alive, which reduces dead-code-elimination mistakes.

func BenchmarkParse(b *testing.B) {
    data := loadFixture("large.json") // setup — excluded from timing
    for b.Loop() {
        Parse(data)  // compiler cannot eliminate this call
    }
}

Legacy b.N loops still compile and are fine to keep when preserving existing benchmarks or supporting Go <1.24. They are easier to get wrong: setup may need b.ResetTimer(), and results may need a sink if the compiler can eliminate the work. Go 1.26 fixed an earlier b.Loop() inlining limitation — benchmarks on 1.24–1.25 already benefit from b.Loop() but may miss inlining optimizations that 1.26 delivers.

Memory tracking

func BenchmarkAlloc(b *testing.B) {
    b.ReportAllocs() // or run with -benchmem flag
    var sink []byte
    for b.Loop() {
        sink = make([]byte, 1024)
    }
    _ = sink
}