See https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/60399#issuecomment-3448987261 What happed to `allocUnsafe` - does that work at all in 24+? Since 24.0.0, there is no observable perf difference between `alloc` and `allocUnsafe` on large arrays, _and_ `allocUnsafe` always appears to be zero-filled In that case places relying on `allocUnsafe` and then `fill` would be ~2x faster (or more) if they just used `alloc` instead of `allocUnsafe` in the first place E.g. `Buffer.concat([Buffer.alloc(0)], 1e6)` is ~10x faster with `.alloc` instead of `.allocUnsafe` + `.fill`, _and_ there appears to be no regression from that change on other `Buffer.concat` usage `allocUnsafe` should be either fixed to be faster than `alloc` or should be replaced with `alloc` everywhere (that will simplify things) and deprecated whatsoever