ui: Restructure flamegraph hash + merge for ~22% speedup on bottom-up

Two structural changes to the hash and merge_hashes pipeline that
together cut native-side hash+merge cost from ~31s to ~22s on a 2.5M
row bottom-up flamegraph (and proportionally more on WASM):

1. Skinny hash output. _viz_flamegraph_upwards_hash and
   _viz_flamegraph_downwards_hash no longer pull in the (small, fixed)
   |grouping| columns or |name| at the end of the walk. Only |grouped|
   columns and the propagated value/cumulativeValue stay - everything
   else is filled in later from a single per-merged-row JOIN against
   |source| in resolve_groups, instead of a per-walk-row JOIN (~4x
   fewer JOIN rows since the walk produces ~9.3M rows that merge into
   ~2.5M).

2. Drop the ORDER BY hash from the hash table; replace the per-row
   LIMIT 1 subquery in merge_hashes with a self-join on a hash-indexed
   grouped table. The old ORDER BY cost ~12s on 9.3M rows. The new
   pipeline is:

     hash (skinny, no ORDER BY) -> INDEX hash(hash)
       -> group_hashes (one row per unique hash, with rep_id) -> INDEX grouped(hash)
       -> resolve_groups (self-join for parentId + JOIN source for cols)

   The materialized + indexed grouped table makes the parentId resolution
   a clean indexed lookup rather than a per-row scan.

3. resolve_groups must ORDER BY g.id at the end. Without it the merged
   table ends up stored in source-JOIN order rather than id-order, and
   the downstream _graph_aggregating_scan in the trim propagation step
   degrades by ~5x. Documented inline.

merge_hashes is removed in favor of the two-step group_hashes +
resolve_groups - there are no other callers of these macros.

Verified end-to-end: identical output (row count, root cumulative,
placeholders) and ~10s native saved on the example trace. WASM
should see proportionally more (the user reported 74s hash + 34s
merged; estimated savings 30-50s).

Notes journal at: /tmp/claude/flamegraph_perf_journal.md
2 files changed
tree: 0370032fc1077065cbd0604bb18da01635dfbe4b
  1. .github/
  2. bazel/
  3. build_overrides/
  4. buildtools/
  5. contrib/
  6. docs/
  7. examples/
  8. gn/
  9. include/
  10. infra/
  11. protos/
  12. python/
  13. sdk/
  14. src/
  15. test/
  16. third_party/
  17. tools/
  18. ui/
  19. .bazelignore
  20. .bazelrc
  21. .bazelversion
  22. .clang-format
  23. .clang-tidy
  24. .git-blame-ignore-revs
  25. .gitallowed
  26. .gitattributes
  27. .gitignore
  28. .gn
  29. .style.yapf
  30. Android.bp
  31. Android.bp.extras
  32. BUILD
  33. BUILD.extras
  34. BUILD.gn
  35. CHANGELOG
  36. CONTRIBUTORS.txt
  37. DIR_METADATA
  38. heapprofd.rc
  39. LICENSE
  40. meson.build
  41. METADATA
  42. MODULE.bazel
  43. MODULE.bazel.lock
  44. MODULE_LICENSE_APACHE2
  45. OWNERS
  46. OWNERS.github
  47. perfetto.rc
  48. perfetto_flags.aconfig
  49. PerfettoIntegrationTests.xml
  50. persistent_cfg.pbtxt
  51. README.chromium
  52. README.md
  53. TEST_MAPPING
  54. traced_perf.rc
  55. WORKSPACE
README.md

Perfetto - System profiling, app tracing and trace analysis

Perfetto is an open-source suite of SDKs, daemons and tools which use tracing to help developers understand the behaviour of complex systems and root-cause functional and performance issues on client and embedded systems.

It is a production-grade tool that is the default tracing system for the Android operating system and the Chromium browser.

Core Components

Perfetto is not a single tool, but a collection of components that work together:

  • High-performance tracing daemons: For capturing tracing information from many processes on a single machine into a unified trace file.
  • Low-overhead tracing SDK: A C++17 library for direct userspace-to-userspace tracing of timings and state changes in your application.
  • Extensive OS-level probes: For capturing system-wide context on Android and Linux (e.g. scheduling states, CPU frequencies, memory profiling, callstack sampling).
  • Browser-based UI: A powerful, fully local UI for visualizing and exploring large, multi-GB traces on a timeline. It works in all major browsers, requires no installation, and can open traces from other tools.
  • SQL-based analysis library: A powerful engine that allows you to programmatically query traces using SQL to automate analysis and extract custom metrics.

Why Use Perfetto?

Perfetto was designed to be a versatile and powerful tracing system for a wide range of use cases.

  • For Android App & Platform Developers: Debug and root-cause functional and performance issues like slow startups, dropped frames (jank), animation glitches, low memory kills, and ANRs. Profile both Java/Kotlin and native C++ memory usage with heap dumps and profiles.
  • For C/C++ Developers (Linux, macOS, Windows): Use the Tracing SDK to instrument your application with custom trace points to understand its execution flow, find performance bottlenecks, and debug complex behavior. On Linux, you can also perform detailed CPU and native heap profiling.
  • For Linux Kernel & System Developers: Get deep insights into kernel behavior. Perfetto acts as an efficient userspace daemon for ftrace, allowing you to visualize scheduling, syscalls, interrupts, and custom kernel tracepoints on a timeline.
  • For Chromium Developers: Perfetto is the tracing backend for chrome://tracing. Use it to debug and root-cause issues in the browser, V8, and Blink.
  • For Performance Engineers & SREs: Analyze and visualize a wide range of profiling and tracing formats, not just Perfetto's. Use the powerful SQL interface to programmatically analyze traces from tools like Linux perf, macOS Instruments, Chrome JSON traces, and more.

Getting Started

We‘ve designed our documentation to guide you to the right information as quickly as possible, whether you’re a newcomer to performance analysis or an experienced developer.

  1. New to tracing? If you're unfamiliar with concepts like tracing and profiling, start here:

  2. Ready to dive in? Our “Getting Started” guide is the main entry point for all users. It will help you find the right tutorials and documentation for your specific needs:

  3. Want the full overview? For a comprehensive look at what Perfetto is, why it's useful, and who uses it, see our main documentation page:

Debian Distribution

For users interested in the Debian distribution of Perfetto, the official source of truth and packaging efforts are maintained at Debian Perfetto Salsa Repository

Community & Support

Have questions? Need help?

We follow Google's Open Source Community Guidelines.