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Uber (Driver Matching) vs Instagram Feed

Uber (Driver Matching)

Uber (Driver Matching)

Geo-indexing, dispatch, real-time location streams.

Components (9)

  • Rider App
  • Driver App
  • API Gateway
  • Dispatch
  • Trip Service
  • Kafka
  • Geo Index
  • Postgres
  • Cassandra

Headline numbers

  • Location pings / sec~250,000/sec
  • Dispatch queries / sec~5,000/sec
  • Matches / sec~1,000/sec
Instagram Feed

Instagram Feed

Fan-out on write vs read, ranking, CDN.

Components (10)

  • Mobile Client
  • CDN
  • API Gateway
  • Feed Service
  • Post Service
  • Kafka
  • Fan-out Worker
  • Redis
  • Postgres
  • S3

Headline numbers

  • Posts / sec (avg)~3,000/sec
  • Feed read QPS~58,000/sec
  • Fan-out writes / sec~600,000/sec

Key differences

Only in Uber (Driver Matching)
None.
In both
  • Client
  • Api Gateway
  • Service
  • Queue
  • Cache
  • Database
Only in Instagram Feed
  • CDN
  • S3

Flow shape

Uber (Driver Matching) flows
  • Request a ride7 steps
  • Driver location update4 steps
  • Geo Index is down4 steps
Instagram Feed flows
  • Post a photo (fan-out on write)7 steps
  • Open feed (precomputed timeline)5 steps
  • Fan-out Worker is down7 steps
  • Timeline cache flushed (Redis restart)4 steps