lowoverhead

Lowoverhead is a design principle in computing and systems engineering that emphasizes minimizing the resource costs associated with an operation, component, or system. The goal is to reduce CPU time, memory usage, I/O, and latency to improve responsiveness and efficiency.

In practice, lowoverhead applies to software libraries, services, and hardware interfaces. It is particularly relevant for embedded systems, real-time control, high-performance networking, and cloud-native architectures where resource constraints or latency targets are strict.

Overhead is defined as the extra work required beyond the core task. Common overhead indicators include CPU cycles per operation, memory footprint, cache misses, and the number of context switches or allocations per request.

Techniques include event-driven or asynchronous I/O, lock-free or fine-grained synchronization, object pooling and preallocation, zero-allocation or in-place algorithms, batching, and use of zero-copy data paths. In networking, kernel bypass and direct user-space processing reduce overhead; in software design, choosing simple abstractions and minimizing unnecessary indirection also helps.

Trade-offs: pursuing very low overhead can increase code complexity, reduce portability, or affect maintainability and safety. Balancing overhead with reliability and features is essential.

Lowoverhead is not a single standard but a goal used across domains to achieve faster, more scalable, and more energy-efficient systems.