ProtoZero

This doc is WIP, stay tuned.

ProtoZero is an almost* zero-copy zero-malloc append-only protobuf library. It's designed to be fast and efficient at the cost of a reduced API surface for generated stubs. The main limitations consist of:

• Append-only interface: no readbacks are possible from the stubs.
• No runtime checks for duplicated or missing mandatory fields.
• Mandatory ordering when writing of nested messages: once a nested message is started it must be completed before adding any fields to its parent.

Allocations and library calls will happen only when crossing the boundary of a contiguous buffer (e.g., to request a new buffer to continue the write). Assuming a chunk size (a trace chunk is what becomes a contiguous buffer within ProtoZero) of 4KB, and an average event size of 32 bytes, only 7 out of 1000 events will hit malloc / ipc / library calls.

Other resources

• Design doc