System design is fundamentally about evaluating options where every choice comes with a cost. Use this page to test the interactive trade-off modal cards.
Latency vs Throughput
Batching many requests together can reduce network, serialization & processing overhead and increase throughput. Yet the downside is individual requests wait longer while a batch forms.
Latency vs Tail Latency
A system can have excellent median latency while a tiny number of slow requests create poor p95 and/or p99 latency. Redundant or hedged requests can reduce these long tails, but they consume extra infrastructure capacity.
Compression vs CPU Usage
Compressing data reduces network bandwidth and storage requirements. Yet compression and decompression require extra CPU cycles and add processing latency.