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perf(PromQL): improve performance of FloatHistogram.KahanAdd#18252

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krajorama merged 1 commit into
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linasm:optimize-float-histogram-kahan-add
Mar 6, 2026
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perf(PromQL): improve performance of FloatHistogram.KahanAdd#18252
krajorama merged 1 commit into
prometheus:mainfrom
linasm:optimize-float-histogram-kahan-add

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@linasm

@linasm linasm commented Mar 6, 2026

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Which issue(s) does the PR fix:

Fixes #18249 (partially)

This line allocates a new histogram (with new bucket slices) on every KahanAdd invocation:

otherC := other.newCompensationHistogram()

However, the bucket values in this histogram are initialized to 0:

PositiveBuckets: make([]float64, len(h.PositiveBuckets)),

And they are never set to non-zero values, except (potentially) when reducing the resolution of other histogram:

otherPositiveSpans, otherPositiveBuckets, otherCPositiveBuckets = kahanReduceResolution(
otherPositiveSpans, otherPositiveBuckets, otherCPositiveBuckets,
other.Schema, h.Schema,
false,
)
otherNegativeSpans, otherNegativeBuckets, otherCNegativeBuckets = kahanReduceResolution(
otherNegativeSpans, otherNegativeBuckets, otherCNegativeBuckets,
other.Schema, h.Schema,
false,
)

Therefore, we can avoid allocating otherC histogram, and only allocate otherCPositiveBuckets and/or otherCNegativeBuckets in case other histogram gets its resolution reduced (which is what this PR does).

Benchmark (using #18248) results:

goos: darwin
goarch: arm64
pkg: github.com/prometheus/prometheus/model/histogram
cpu: Apple M1 Pro
                              │ before.txt  │              after.txt              │
                              │   sec/op    │   sec/op     vs base                │
FloatHistogramAdd/KahanAdd-10   46.67µ ± 1%   36.10µ ± 2%  -22.65% (p=0.000 n=10)

                              │  before.txt  │             after.txt              │
                              │     B/op     │    B/op     vs base                │
FloatHistogramAdd/KahanAdd-10   29904.0 ± 0%   800.0 ± 0%  -97.32% (p=0.000 n=10)

                              │  before.txt  │             after.txt              │
                              │  allocs/op   │ allocs/op   vs base                │
FloatHistogramAdd/KahanAdd-10   241.000 ± 0%   3.000 ± 0%  -98.76% (p=0.000 n=10)

Note that with this change KahanAdd is still ~2 times slower than a plain Add. I believe this could be optimized more aggressively by only doing a local Kahan compensation in kahanReduceResolution for other histogram. This would allow simplifying kahanAddBuckets (dropping compensationBucketsB argument and related code). But, as that might involve some precision tradeoffs, I would leave it for a separate change.

Does this PR introduce a user-facing change?

[PERF] PromQL: partially address performance regression in native histogram aggregations due to using `KahanAdd`.

@linasm
linasm requested review from a team, beorn7 and krajorama as code owners March 6, 2026 15:52

@krajorama krajorama left a comment

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  • switching to just allocating the buckets as []float64 is trivial change
  • I'm not super familiar with Kahan sum, but skipping the addition if the added value is zero make sense.

Note: I tried Claude on this code, but it ignored our Kahan implementation and just assumed it knew what it was doing and told me it had a bug when adding 0 so this change was a bugfix as well - lol.

@krajorama
krajorama merged commit f659ca3 into prometheus:main Mar 6, 2026
57 of 59 checks passed
@linasm

linasm commented Mar 7, 2026

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@krajorama thanks for a quick turnaround! Could we also consider landing the benchmark (#18248)? I believe there is still some performance juice to be squeezed out of KahanAdd (perhaps someone else could undertake it as my availability will be limited in the near term), and having a readily available benchmark would be helpful.

renovate Bot added a commit to sdwilsh/ansible-playbooks that referenced this pull request Apr 8, 2026
##### [\`v3.11.0\`](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/tag/v3.11.0)

- \[CHANGE] Hetzner SD: The `__meta_hetzner_datacenter` label is deprecated for the role `robot` but kept for backward compatibility, use the `__meta_hetzner_robot_datacenter` label instead. For the role `hcloud`, the label is deprecated and will stop working after the 1 July 2026. [#17850](prometheus/prometheus#17850)
- \[CHANGE] Hetzner SD: The `__meta_hetzner_hcloud_datacenter_location` and `__meta_hetzner_hcloud_datacenter_location_network_zone` labels are deprecated, use the `__meta_hetzner_hcloud_location` and `__meta_hetzner_hcloud_location_network_zone` labels instead. [#17850](prometheus/prometheus#17850)
- \[CHANGE] Promtool: Redirect debug output to stderr to avoid interfering with stdout-based tool output. [#18346](prometheus/prometheus#18346)
- \[FEATURE] AWS SD: Add Elasticache Role. [#18099](prometheus/prometheus#18099)
- \[FEATURE] AWS SD: Add RDS Role. [#18206](prometheus/prometheus#18206)
- \[FEATURE] Azure SD: Add support for Azure Workload Identity authentication method. [#17207](prometheus/prometheus#17207)
- \[FEATURE] Discovery: Introduce `prometheus_sd_last_update_timestamp_seconds` metric to track the last time a service discovery update was sent to consumers. [#18194](prometheus/prometheus#18194)
- \[FEATURE] Kubernetes SD: Add support for node role selectors for pod roles. [#18006](prometheus/prometheus#18006)
- \[FEATURE] Kubernetes SD: Introduce pod-based labels for deployment, cronjob, and job controller names: `__meta_kubernetes_pod_deployment_name`, `__meta_kubernetes_pod_cronjob_name` and `__meta_kubernetes_pod_job_name`, respectively. [#17774](prometheus/prometheus#17774)
- \[FEATURE] PromQL: Add `</` and `>/` operators for trimming observations from native histograms. [#17904](prometheus/prometheus#17904)
- \[FEATURE] PromQL: Add experimental `histogram_quantiles` variadic function for computing multiple quantiles at once. [#17285](prometheus/prometheus#17285)
- \[FEATURE] TSDB: Add `storage.tsdb.retention.percentage` configuration to configure the maximum percent of disk usable for TSDB storage. [#18080](prometheus/prometheus#18080)
- \[FEATURE] TSDB: Add an experimental `fast-startup` feature flag that writes a `series_state.json` file to the WAL directory to track active series state across restarts. [#18303](prometheus/prometheus#18303)
- \[FEATURE] TSDB: Add an experimental `st-storage` feature flag. When enabled, Prometheus stores ingested start timestamps (ST, previously called Created Timestamp) from scrape or OTLP in the TSDB and Agent WAL, and exposes them via Remote Write 2. [#18062](prometheus/prometheus#18062)
- \[FEATURE] TSDB: Add an experimental `xor2-encoding` feature flag for the new TSDB block float sample chunk encoding that is optimized for scraped data and allows encoding start timestamps. [#18062](prometheus/prometheus#18062)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] HTTP client: Add AWS `external_id` support for sigv4. [#17916](prometheus/prometheus#17916)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] Kubernetes SD: Deduplicate deprecation warning logs from the Kubernetes API to reduce noise. [#17829](prometheus/prometheus#17829)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] TSDB: Remove old temporary checkpoints when creating a Checkpoint. [#17598](prometheus/prometheus#17598)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] UI: Add autocomplete support for experimental `first_over_time` and `ts_of_first_over_time` PromQL functions. [#18318](prometheus/prometheus#18318)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] Vultr SD: Upgrade govultr library from v2 to v3 for continued security patches and maintenance. [#18347](prometheus/prometheus#18347)
- \[PERF] PromQL: Improve performance and reduce heap allocations in joins (VectorBinop)/And/Or/Unless. [#17159](prometheus/prometheus#17159)
- \[PERF] PromQL: Partially address performance regression in native histogram aggregations due to using `KahanAdd`. [#18252](prometheus/prometheus#18252)
- \[PERF] Remote write: Optimize WAL watching used for RW sending to reuse internal buffers. [#18250](prometheus/prometheus#18250)
- \[PERF] TSDB: Optimize LabelValues intersection performance for matchers. [#18069](prometheus/prometheus#18069)
- \[PERF] UI: Skip restacking on hover in stacked series charts. [#18230](prometheus/prometheus#18230)
- \[BUGFIX] AWS SD: Fix EC2 SD ignoring the configured `endpoint` option, a regression from the AWS SDK v2 migration. [#18133](prometheus/prometheus#18133)
- \[BUGFIX] AWS SD: Fix panic in EC2 SD when DescribeAvailabilityZones returns nil ZoneName or ZoneId. [#18133](prometheus/prometheus#18133)
- \[BUGFIX] Agent: Fix memory leak caused by duplicate SeriesRefs being loaded as active series. [#17538](prometheus/prometheus#17538)
- \[BUGFIX] Alerting: Fix alert state incorrectly resetting to pending when the FOR period is increased in the config file. [#18244](prometheus/prometheus#18244)
- \[BUGFIX] Azure SD: Fix system-assigned managed identity not working when `client_id` is empty. [#18323](prometheus/prometheus#18323)
- \[BUGFIX] Consul SD: Fix filter parameter not being applied to health service endpoint, causing Node and Node.Meta filters to be ignored. [#17349](prometheus/prometheus#17349)
- \[BUGFIX] Kubernetes SD: Fix duplicate targets generated by `*DualStack` EndpointSlices policies. [#18192](prometheus/prometheus#18192)
- \[BUGFIX] OTLP: Fix ErrTooOldSample being returned as HTTP 500 instead of 400 in PRW v2 histogram write paths, preventing infinite client retry loops. [#18084](prometheus/prometheus#18084)
- \[BUGFIX] OTLP: Fix exemplars getting mixed between incorrect parts of a histogram. [#18056](prometheus/prometheus#18056)
- \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Do not skip histogram buckets in queries where histogram trimming is used. [#18263](prometheus/prometheus#18263)
- \[BUGFIX] Remote write: Fix `prometheus_remote_storage_sent_batch_duration_seconds` measuring before the request was sent. [#18214](prometheus/prometheus#18214)
- \[BUGFIX] Rules: Fix alert state restoration when rule labels contain Go template expressions. [#18375](prometheus/prometheus#18375)
- \[BUGFIX] Scrape: Fix panic when parsing bare label names without an equal sign in brace-only metric notation. [#18229](prometheus/prometheus#18229)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fail early when `use-uncached-io` feature flag is set on unsupported environments. [#18219](prometheus/prometheus#18219)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fall back to CLI flag values when retention is removed from config file. [#18200](prometheus/prometheus#18200)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix memory leaks in buffer pools by clearing reference fields before returning buffers to pools. [#17895](prometheus/prometheus#17895)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix missing mmap of histogram chunks during WAL replay. [#18306](prometheus/prometheus#18306)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix storage.tsdb.retention.time unit mismatch in file causing retention to be 1e6 times longer than configured. [#18200](prometheus/prometheus#18200)
- \[BUGFIX] Tracing: Fix missing traceID in query log when tracing is enabled, previously only spanID was emitted. [#18189](prometheus/prometheus#18189)
- \[BUGFIX] UI: Fix tooltip Y-offset drift when using multiple graph panels. [#18228](prometheus/prometheus#18228)
- \[BUGFIX] UI: Update retention display in runtime info when config is reloaded. [#18200](prometheus/prometheus#18200)
renovate Bot added a commit to sdwilsh/ansible-playbooks that referenced this pull request Apr 8, 2026
##### [\`v3.11.0\`](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/tag/v3.11.0)

- \[CHANGE] Hetzner SD: The `__meta_hetzner_datacenter` label is deprecated for the role `robot` but kept for backward compatibility, use the `__meta_hetzner_robot_datacenter` label instead. For the role `hcloud`, the label is deprecated and will stop working after the 1 July 2026. [#17850](prometheus/prometheus#17850)
- \[CHANGE] Hetzner SD: The `__meta_hetzner_hcloud_datacenter_location` and `__meta_hetzner_hcloud_datacenter_location_network_zone` labels are deprecated, use the `__meta_hetzner_hcloud_location` and `__meta_hetzner_hcloud_location_network_zone` labels instead. [#17850](prometheus/prometheus#17850)
- \[CHANGE] Promtool: Redirect debug output to stderr to avoid interfering with stdout-based tool output. [#18346](prometheus/prometheus#18346)
- \[FEATURE] AWS SD: Add Elasticache Role. [#18099](prometheus/prometheus#18099)
- \[FEATURE] AWS SD: Add RDS Role. [#18206](prometheus/prometheus#18206)
- \[FEATURE] Azure SD: Add support for Azure Workload Identity authentication method. [#17207](prometheus/prometheus#17207)
- \[FEATURE] Discovery: Introduce `prometheus_sd_last_update_timestamp_seconds` metric to track the last time a service discovery update was sent to consumers. [#18194](prometheus/prometheus#18194)
- \[FEATURE] Kubernetes SD: Add support for node role selectors for pod roles. [#18006](prometheus/prometheus#18006)
- \[FEATURE] Kubernetes SD: Introduce pod-based labels for deployment, cronjob, and job controller names: `__meta_kubernetes_pod_deployment_name`, `__meta_kubernetes_pod_cronjob_name` and `__meta_kubernetes_pod_job_name`, respectively. [#17774](prometheus/prometheus#17774)
- \[FEATURE] PromQL: Add `</` and `>/` operators for trimming observations from native histograms. [#17904](prometheus/prometheus#17904)
- \[FEATURE] PromQL: Add experimental `histogram_quantiles` variadic function for computing multiple quantiles at once. [#17285](prometheus/prometheus#17285)
- \[FEATURE] TSDB: Add `storage.tsdb.retention.percentage` configuration to configure the maximum percent of disk usable for TSDB storage. [#18080](prometheus/prometheus#18080)
- \[FEATURE] TSDB: Add an experimental `fast-startup` feature flag that writes a `series_state.json` file to the WAL directory to track active series state across restarts. [#18303](prometheus/prometheus#18303)
- \[FEATURE] TSDB: Add an experimental `st-storage` feature flag. When enabled, Prometheus stores ingested start timestamps (ST, previously called Created Timestamp) from scrape or OTLP in the TSDB and Agent WAL, and exposes them via Remote Write 2. [#18062](prometheus/prometheus#18062)
- \[FEATURE] TSDB: Add an experimental `xor2-encoding` feature flag for the new TSDB block float sample chunk encoding that is optimized for scraped data and allows encoding start timestamps. [#18062](prometheus/prometheus#18062)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] HTTP client: Add AWS `external_id` support for sigv4. [#17916](prometheus/prometheus#17916)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] Kubernetes SD: Deduplicate deprecation warning logs from the Kubernetes API to reduce noise. [#17829](prometheus/prometheus#17829)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] TSDB: Remove old temporary checkpoints when creating a Checkpoint. [#17598](prometheus/prometheus#17598)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] UI: Add autocomplete support for experimental `first_over_time` and `ts_of_first_over_time` PromQL functions. [#18318](prometheus/prometheus#18318)
- \[ENHANCEMENT] Vultr SD: Upgrade govultr library from v2 to v3 for continued security patches and maintenance. [#18347](prometheus/prometheus#18347)
- \[PERF] PromQL: Improve performance and reduce heap allocations in joins (VectorBinop)/And/Or/Unless. [#17159](prometheus/prometheus#17159)
- \[PERF] PromQL: Partially address performance regression in native histogram aggregations due to using `KahanAdd`. [#18252](prometheus/prometheus#18252)
- \[PERF] Remote write: Optimize WAL watching used for RW sending to reuse internal buffers. [#18250](prometheus/prometheus#18250)
- \[PERF] TSDB: Optimize LabelValues intersection performance for matchers. [#18069](prometheus/prometheus#18069)
- \[PERF] UI: Skip restacking on hover in stacked series charts. [#18230](prometheus/prometheus#18230)
- \[BUGFIX] AWS SD: Fix EC2 SD ignoring the configured `endpoint` option, a regression from the AWS SDK v2 migration. [#18133](prometheus/prometheus#18133)
- \[BUGFIX] AWS SD: Fix panic in EC2 SD when DescribeAvailabilityZones returns nil ZoneName or ZoneId. [#18133](prometheus/prometheus#18133)
- \[BUGFIX] Agent: Fix memory leak caused by duplicate SeriesRefs being loaded as active series. [#17538](prometheus/prometheus#17538)
- \[BUGFIX] Alerting: Fix alert state incorrectly resetting to pending when the FOR period is increased in the config file. [#18244](prometheus/prometheus#18244)
- \[BUGFIX] Azure SD: Fix system-assigned managed identity not working when `client_id` is empty. [#18323](prometheus/prometheus#18323)
- \[BUGFIX] Consul SD: Fix filter parameter not being applied to health service endpoint, causing Node and Node.Meta filters to be ignored. [#17349](prometheus/prometheus#17349)
- \[BUGFIX] Kubernetes SD: Fix duplicate targets generated by `*DualStack` EndpointSlices policies. [#18192](prometheus/prometheus#18192)
- \[BUGFIX] OTLP: Fix ErrTooOldSample being returned as HTTP 500 instead of 400 in PRW v2 histogram write paths, preventing infinite client retry loops. [#18084](prometheus/prometheus#18084)
- \[BUGFIX] OTLP: Fix exemplars getting mixed between incorrect parts of a histogram. [#18056](prometheus/prometheus#18056)
- \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Do not skip histogram buckets in queries where histogram trimming is used. [#18263](prometheus/prometheus#18263)
- \[BUGFIX] Remote write: Fix `prometheus_remote_storage_sent_batch_duration_seconds` measuring before the request was sent. [#18214](prometheus/prometheus#18214)
- \[BUGFIX] Rules: Fix alert state restoration when rule labels contain Go template expressions. [#18375](prometheus/prometheus#18375)
- \[BUGFIX] Scrape: Fix panic when parsing bare label names without an equal sign in brace-only metric notation. [#18229](prometheus/prometheus#18229)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fail early when `use-uncached-io` feature flag is set on unsupported environments. [#18219](prometheus/prometheus#18219)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fall back to CLI flag values when retention is removed from config file. [#18200](prometheus/prometheus#18200)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix memory leaks in buffer pools by clearing reference fields before returning buffers to pools. [#17895](prometheus/prometheus#17895)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix missing mmap of histogram chunks during WAL replay. [#18306](prometheus/prometheus#18306)
- \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix storage.tsdb.retention.time unit mismatch in file causing retention to be 1e6 times longer than configured. [#18200](prometheus/prometheus#18200)
- \[BUGFIX] Tracing: Fix missing traceID in query log when tracing is enabled, previously only spanID was emitted. [#18189](prometheus/prometheus#18189)
- \[BUGFIX] UI: Fix tooltip Y-offset drift when using multiple graph panels. [#18228](prometheus/prometheus#18228)
- \[BUGFIX] UI: Update retention display in runtime info when config is reloaded. [#18200](prometheus/prometheus#18200)
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Native histogram query performance degradation in 3.10

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