5x faster Edge Functions: V8 isolates to Firecracker MicroVMs
Netlify has upgraded its Edge Functions infrastructure by moving from a hosted execution service to MicroVMs, resulting in a 5x speed improvement. This architectural change enhances performance and security without requiring changes to how developers write their code.
Why it matters
Improving edge computing performance is critical for modern web applications that require low latency for personalization and routing.
About a billion Edge Functions run on Netlify every day — Sunweb personalizing pages, Loto-Québec routing traffic on a cookie check, and hundreds of thousands of other sites doing everything from personalization to routing to auth. All of it runs on a full JavaScript runtime that scales with our customers’ traffic.
This poses a significant technical challenge, as we strive to make the latency as low as possible. To run tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of edge functions per second, we need to process each request, route it correctly, allocate compute capacity, and boot both our platform code and the customer’s code. All of that has to happen within milliseconds.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in