Cloud Computing without Containers
Cloudflare's cloud computing platform, called Workers, uses Isolates instead of containers or virtual machines for its Serverless and cloud computing services. This technology was developed by the Google Chrome team to power the Javascript engine in their browser. Isolates are lightweight contexts that group variables with the code allowed to mutate them, allowing a single process to run hundreds or thousands of Isolates seamlessly. Workers offer faster cold-start times and better memory management than traditional Serverless platforms like AWS Lambda, resulting in lower costs for users. However, an Isolate-based system can't run arbitrary compiled code, limiting its use to modern applications or legacy applications with latency-sensitive components initially.
Company
Cloudflare
Date published
Nov. 9, 2018
Author(s)
Zack Bloom
Word count
1724
Language
English
Hacker News points
72