# Little's Law in practice with Cloud Topics

DevFeed: [Little's Law in practice with Cloud Topics](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/little-s-law-in-practice-with-cloud-topics-12714.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.redpanda.com/blog/littles-law-in-practice-with-cloud-topics>)

Author: Noah Watkins

Published: 2026-05-05T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Redpanda](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/redpanda.md>)

Topics: [Cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud.md>), [cloud-infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-infrastructure.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [Low Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/low-latency.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [Replication](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/replication.md>), [IO](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/io.md>), [Seastar](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/seastar.md>), [C++](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/c-plus-plus.md>), [Kafka](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/kafka.md>), [cpu](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cpu.md>), [Caching](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/caching.md>)

Tags: [c-plus-plus](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/c-plus-plus.md>), [cache](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cache.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [core](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/core.md>), [cpu](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cpu.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [kafka](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kafka.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [low-latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/low-latency.md>), [replication](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/replication.md>), [seastar](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/seastar.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/systems.md>)

## AI overview

The article examines how Cloud Topics reintroduced high-latency I/O through inexpensive cloud object storage, exposing an old bottleneck in Redpanda's write pipeline. It explains Redpanda's thread-per-core architecture, replication and pipelined request processing, and how shifting storage bottlenecks affected performance.

## Source excerpt

From spinning disks to CPUs to cloud object storage, shifting bottlenecks have shaped Redpanda's architecture. Here's what Cloud Topics revealed about today's demand for high-latency storage.