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arXiv:2010.07115cs.DC

A lightweight design for serverless Function-as-a-Service

Ju Long, Hung-Ying Tai, Shen-Ta Hsieh, Michael Juntao Yuan

Abstract

FaaS (Function as a Service) allows developers to upload and execute code in the cloud without managing servers. FaaS offerings from leading public cloud providers are based on system microVM or application container technologies such as Firecracker or Docker. In this paper, we demonstrate that lightweight high-level runtimes, such as WebAssembly, could offer performance and scaling advantages over existing solutions, and could enable finely-grained pay-as-you-use business models. We compared widely used performance benchmarks between Docker native and WebAssembly implementations of the same algorithms. We also discuss the barriers for WebAssembly adoption in serverless computing, such as the lack of tooling support.

arXiv comments
5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, in IEEE Software, 2020
Journal reference
DOI
doi:10.1109/MS.2020.3028991
Subjects
cs.DCDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing

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Linked by 3 identifiable commenters in 4 comments across 3 threads, from Jun 2022 to Dec 2022.

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Discussed in comments3 threads

  1. WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers 1 comment

    • No cold-starts means no overhead of starting a process to answer a request like most container-based serverless environments (without having to keep pre-warmed instances which kind of defeats the purpose) A couple references regarding cold-starts and performance in serverless…

      ridruejoView on HNParent context

  2. WasmEdge 2 comments

    • WasmEdge contributor here. We had some last year. Paper: A Lightweight Design for High-performance Serverless Computing, published on IEEE Software, Jan 2021. https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.07115 Article: Performance Analysis for Arm vs. x86 CPUs in the Cloud, published on…

      3SophonsView on HNParent context

    • We did benchmarks last year but not recently (Will update if there are new ones). Paper: A Lightweight Design for High-performance Serverless Computing, published on IEEE Software, Jan 2021. https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.07115 Article: Performance Analysis for Arm vs. x86 CPUs in…

      3SophonsView on HNParent context

  3. WasmEdge, a lightweight, high-performance, and extensible WebAssembly runtime 1 comment

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