Performance Tuning

Modern software is expected to run faster, scale further, and deliver more value than
ever. But real-world systems often fall short because the real bottlenecks hide deep
across the stack — inside algorithms, memory hierarchies, vector units, kernel settings,
NUMA topologies, or microarchitectural behaviors that most engineering teams never
touch.

Measure, analyze, and engineer — not guess. Our Arm and RISC-V experts uncover the bottlenecks hiding deep across your stack and eliminate them with precision, delivering meaningful, measurable performance gains.
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Unlock the True Performance of Your Platform

Performance problems rarely originate where they appear. Root causes hide across cache behavior, compiler decisions, kernel scheduling, and NUMA imbalance. Development teams face challenges such as:
  • Bottlenecks buried across multiple layers of the stack
  • Hardware-specific behaviors not visible through normal profiling
  • Vector units (NEON, SVE, RVV) left underutilized
  • Kernel parameters and I/O paths configured for the wrong workload
  • NUMA systems creating cross-domain memory penalties
  • Complex CPU pipelines and memory subsystems that require microarchitectural expertise
  • Naive or over-zealous power management strategies

Diagnosing and resolving these issues requires deep knowledge of the hardware architecture, compilers, OS internals, and low-level performance measurement. RISCstar provides this expertise, delivering optimizations that are correct, stable, and measurable.

RISCstar's Approach to Performance Optimization

RISCstar follows a disciplined, cross-layer methodology that starts from system symptoms and drills progressively into root causes:
top-down

Top-Down Performance Analysis

We start at the macro level — system KPIs and workload behavior — tracing symptoms down through threads and hardware pipelines to target the highest-ROI optimizations.
static-analysis

Static Analysis & Code Path Examination

We profile and analyze source code patterns, compiler output, and memory access structures before touching runtime tools — uncovering inefficiencies early.

runtime

Runtime Dynamic Tracing

We capture detailed runtime events on live systems to diagnose complex or intermittent performance issues.
low-level

Low-Level Hardware & Microarchitectural Optimization

We tune at the lowest level: SVE, SVE2, and RVV vectorization; cache locality; NUMA-aware scheduling; and kernel stack tuning.

  • Vectorization using NEON, SVE, SVE2, and RVV
  • Intrinsics and hand-written assembly
  • Cache locality and prefetching optimization
  • NUMA-aware scheduling and memory placement
  • Kernel and network stack tuning
  • Accelerator offload and heterogeneous compute scheduling
compile-time

Compile-Time Instrumentation

We instrument binaries at build time to gather execution counts and hot loops for targeted optimization.
benchmarking

Benchmarking & Validation

We validate improvements across real workloads and stress scenarios, ensuring results are correct, stable, and tied to your KPIs.
We use state-of-the-art tools in our methodology to diagnose and optimize software performance, including:
  • Compiler-integrated analysis (GCC, LLVM/Clang)
  • Source-level analysis (clang-tidy, cppcheck)
  • IR/binary-level analysis (LLVM MCA, GNU binutils)
  • Profilers & instrumentation (gprof, perf)
  • Dynamic tracing frameworks (eBPF/BCC, ftrace, dtrace, SystemTap, LTTNG, Perfetto)
  • System observability tools (sar, iostat, mpstat, valgrind)
  • Hardware vector extensions on Arm (NEON, SVE/SVE2) and RISC-V (RVV)
  • Cryptographic acceleration instructions (AES, SHA, SM3/SM4, custom RISC-V extensions)
We choose the right tools for the job — and often contribute upstream improvements ourselves.

Optimization Success Stories

Our engineers have delivered significant performance wins across widely-used open source projects and production platforms. Examples include:

multimedia-codes

Multimedia Codecs (x264/x265)

Optimized critical kernels in open-source video codecs, accelerating H.264 and H.265 workloads used in streaming, media, and embedded systems
blas

BLAS Math Library (Fujitsu A64FX)

Implemented SVE-optimized BLAS routines delivering ~3.5× speedup in matrix multiplication using 512-bit SVE
isa

ISA-L (Intel Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library)

RISCstar optimized ReedSolomon erasure code matrix operations using SVE, enabling higher throughput in storage and data-protection workloads.
xxhash

xxHash

Rewrote XXH3, XXH64, and XXH32 using Arm SVE and multi-buffer technology, achieving ~3–4× improvement in hashing throughput
cryptography

Cryptography (Arm)

Optimized SM3, SM4, RSA, and AES using Arm cryptographic extensions and SVE-based vectorization
openssl

OpenSSL 3.0 Multi-Acceleration Scheduler

We contributed to the engine responsible for intelligently routing workloads across hardware accelerators, CPU vector units, and dedicated crypto instructions.
intel

Intel IPsec-MB

Accelerated ZUC and SNOW algorithms using SIMD and multi-buffer techniques, substantially increasing cryptographic throughput for network workloads
These are just a few examples of the performance wins we’ve delivered.

Why RISCstar? 

When performance is on the line, you need experts who specialize in Arm and RISC-V — not generalists learning on the job.
  • Linux kernel internals
  • Arm and RISC-V CPU microarchitecture
  • Vectorization (NEON, SVE, SVE2, RVV)
  • Compiler behavior and code generation
  • NUMA systems and many-core servers
  • High-performance cryptography
  • Media, and networking workloads
We combine deep theoretical understanding with hands-on expertise across the entire stack — from algorithm design to instruction-level tuning.
Where other firms stop at profiling and recommendations, RISCstar goes all the way down to assembly, microarchitecture, and kernel-level optimization. We don’t just diagnose problems — we fix them.
  • Experience: All of our engineers bring over a decade of hands-on optimization experience, delivering measurable performance gains across Arm and RISC-V workloads.
  • Expertise: Cross-layer knowledge spanning hardware architecture, compilers, and OS internals, finding root causes, not symptoms, with optimizations tied to your KPIs.
  • Technical Depth: We tune at the lowest levels — SVE, SVE2, and RVV vectorization; cache locality; NUMA-aware scheduling — going deeper than compilers alone.
  • Methodology: We don't guess. We measure, analyze, and engineer using static analysis, dynamic tracing, and rigorous benchmarking to validate every improvement.

RISCstar, Your Partner for Success

RISCstar will help you get the most out of your Arm and RISC-V hardware, with measurable, validated results across the full stack. If you have:
  • an Arm or RISC-V platform that isn't delivering the performance your hardware is capable of
  • bottlenecks you've been unable to diagnose or resolve with your existing team, or
  • a product where power, throughput, or latency targets are at risk
We have extensive experience in these situations and are here to help.
Contact us to discuss your performance optimization needs.

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