To get the most out of this book

This book is for Go professionals and developers seeking to execute their code faster, so an intermediate to advanced understanding of Go programming is necessary to make the most out of this book. The Go language has relatively minimal system requirements. A modern computer with a modern operating system should support the Go runtime and its dependencies. Go is used in many low power devices that have limited CPU, Memory, and I/O requirements.

You can see the requirements for the language listed at the following URL: https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/MinimumRequirements.

In this book I used Fedora Core Linux (version 29 during the time of writing this book) as the operating system. Instructions on how to install the Fedora Workstation Linux distribution can be found on the Fedora page at the following URL: https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/.

Docker is used for many of the examples in this book. You can see the requirements listed for Docker at the following URL: https://docs.docker.com/install/.

In Chapter 9, GPU Parallelization in Go, we discuss GPU programming. To perform the tasks of this chapter, you'll need one of two things:

• A NVIDIA enabled GPU. I used a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 in my testing, with a Compute Capability of 3.0.
• A GPU enabled cloud instance. Chapter 9 discusses a couple of different providers and methodologies for this. GPUs on Compute Engine work for this. More up to date information on GPUs on Compute Engine can be found at the following URL: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/gpus.

After you read this book; I hope you'll be able to write more efficient Go code. You'll hopefully be able to quantify and validate your efforts as well.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
2. Select the Support tab.
3. Click on Code Downloads.
4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

• WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
• Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
• 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/bobstrecansky/HighPerformanceWithGo/. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Code in Action

Code in Action videos for this book can be viewed at http://bit.ly/2QcfEJI.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781789805789_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: " The following code blocks will show the Next() incantation"

A block of code is set as follows:

// Note the trailing () for this anonymous function invocation
func() {
  fmt.Println("Hello Go")
}()

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

// Note the trailing () for this anonymous function invocation
func() {
  fmt.Println("Hello Go")
}()

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ go test -bench=. -benchtime 2s -count 2 -benchmem -cpu 4

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "The reverse algorithm takes a dataset and reverses the values of the set"

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.