5 collocation exercises on performance language — reducing latency, improving throughput, spikes, degradation, and saturation.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Requests are slow. The team's goal is to make responses faster, so they aim to ___ latency.
Reduce latency (or lower / cut latency) is the standard collocation for making responses faster.
reduce / lower / cut latency — lower is better
Latency is the delay per request, measured in ms
"Shrink off" and "minimise out" are not idiomatic. Example: "Caching reduced p99 latency from 400ms to 80ms."
2 / 5
The system needs to handle more requests per second. The team works to ___ throughput.
Improve throughput (or increase / boost throughput) means handling more work per unit of time.
improve / increase throughput — higher is better
Throughput = requests (or operations) per second
"Heighten" and "grow out" don't collocate here. Example: "Batching writes improved throughput by 3x."
3 / 5
At noon, latency suddenly jumps for a few seconds then returns to normal. Engineers say latency ___.
A spike is a sudden sharp increase.
latency spiked / a latency spike — a brief sharp rise
Also: traffic spiked, CPU spiked
"Peaked up" and "jolted" aren't standard. Example: "Latency spiked during the cache flush, then settled."
4 / 5
Under heavy load, service quality gets worse but doesn't fully fail. The team says performance ___.
Degrade is the standard verb for performance/quality getting worse.
performance degrades / degraded service
Related: graceful degradation — failing partially rather than completely
"Worsens off" and "declines down" are not idiomatic. Example: "Under load the service degrades but stays available."
5 / 5
A resource (CPU, network, connection pool) is being used at 100% capacity. Engineers say it is ___.
Saturate means driving a resource to its full capacity so it can't do more.
saturate a link / the CPU / the connection pool
A saturated resource is a common bottleneck signal
"Maxed out" is informal but acceptable; "maxed in" and "choked off" are not standard. Example: "The network link is saturated, so adding workers won't help."