In 2020, a concept emerged to optimize Varnish’s memory management by clearing only the used portion of memory blocks, rather than wiping the entire block, aiming to improve performance by reducing unnecessary memory operations. The challenge was ensuring data integrity to prevent leaks between requests, which was addressed by implementing a system that tracked the high watermark of memory usage during requests. The breakthrough came when a performance model revealed memory traffic, rather than CPU cycles, as the bottleneck on some AMD machines, prompting the pursuit of this optimization. Safety was ensured by leveraging existing workspace integrity checks and random sampling to validate memory usage correctness without significant overhead. After extensive testing in shadow mode, the optimized approach was rolled out, resulting in substantial reductions in memory writes and CPU usage, particularly on AMD systems, while also improving the instructions-per-cycle (IPC) for other processes by freeing up memory bandwidth. The experience highlighted the importance of focusing on true system bottlenecks, ensuring data security, and re-evaluating past ideas with new insights for potential performance improvements.