Discovered: Nov 8, 2025 17:42 (UTC) ME:: Need to explore Flame Graphs for support data and need to read the The Flame Graph ACM Paper ; Brendan Gregg:: Flame Graphs

QUOTE

The x-axis shows the stack profile population, sorted alphabetically (it is not the passage of time), and the y-axis shows stack depth, counting from zero at the bottom. Each rectangle represents a stack frame. The wider a frame is is, the more often it was present in the stacks. The top edge shows what is on-CPU, and beneath it is its ancestry. Original flame graphs use random colors to help visually differentiate adjacent frames. Variations include inverting the y-axis (an “icicle graph”), changing the hue to indicate code type, and using a color spectrum to convey an additional dimension.

Flame graphs are both a static and dynamic visualization. As a static visualization, a flame graph can be saved as an image, included in print (books), and will still convey the “big picture” as only the most frequent frames have enough width for labels. A dynamic visualization allows interactive features to aid navigation and comprehension, including:

Mouse hover shows additional frame details in a status bar. Mouse click zooms the visualization horizontally, revealing function names previously elided. Search matches and highlights a given term and shows the “cumulative percentage” of stacks including the search term.

This visualization is fully explained in my ACMQ article The Flame Graph, also published in Communications of the ACM, Vol. 59 No. 6.

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