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1/n
Many people are saying that Fastly is slow in launching compute@edge and Cloudflare is way ahead and has already launched computing at edge.
Many people are saying that Fastly is slow in launching compute@edge and Cloudflare is way ahead and has already launched computing at edge.
2/n
Firstly, we need to understand that Cloudflare is using Google V8 Engine and V8 is a runtime environment built to the chrome to separate out your tabs. It was created so if a tab on chrome crashes, it will not affect other tabs.
Firstly, we need to understand that Cloudflare is using Google V8 Engine and V8 is a runtime environment built to the chrome to separate out your tabs. It was created so if a tab on chrome crashes, it will not affect other tabs.
3/n
The reason why Fastly didn’t use V8 because it was built for browsers and Fastly’s use case has a complete different environment as it is in the edge servers. It is not the 1st time Fastly built something internally because they wanted their solution to be fully customizable.
The reason why Fastly didn’t use V8 because it was built for browsers and Fastly’s use case has a complete different environment as it is in the edge servers. It is not the 1st time Fastly built something internally because they wanted their solution to be fully customizable.
4/n
They do not want to just put things together and sacrifice performance. They did the same thing back when they designed and built their own load balancing and routing infrastructure.
They do not want to just put things together and sacrifice performance. They did the same thing back when they designed and built their own load balancing and routing infrastructure.
5/n
So let's compare between Fastly’s own opensource runtime, Lucet vs Chrome V8. "A major design requirement for Lucet was to be able to execute on every single request that Fastly handles...
So let's compare between Fastly’s own opensource runtime, Lucet vs Chrome V8. "A major design requirement for Lucet was to be able to execute on every single request that Fastly handles...
6/n
...That means creating a WebAssembly instance for each of the tens of thousands of requests per second in a single process, which requires a dramatically lower runtime footprint than possible with a browser JavaScript engine...
...That means creating a WebAssembly instance for each of the tens of thousands of requests per second in a single process, which requires a dramatically lower runtime footprint than possible with a browser JavaScript engine...
7/n
...Lucet can instantiate WebAssembly modules in under 50 microseconds, with just a few kilobytes of memory overhead. By comparison, Chromium's V8 engine takes about 5 milliseconds, and tens of megabytes of memory overhead, to instantiate JavaScript or WebAssembly programs."
...Lucet can instantiate WebAssembly modules in under 50 microseconds, with just a few kilobytes of memory overhead. By comparison, Chromium's V8 engine takes about 5 milliseconds, and tens of megabytes of memory overhead, to instantiate JavaScript or WebAssembly programs."
8/n
That is a 100x in performance here. Fastly know that their target clients are enterprises and they know they need a strong and steady infrastructure. They do not want to rush things out and integrate different solutions together and sacrifice on performance.
That is a 100x in performance here. Fastly know that their target clients are enterprises and they know they need a strong and steady infrastructure. They do not want to rush things out and integrate different solutions together and sacrifice on performance.
9/n
How I see Fastly and Cloudflare is this.
Cloudflare is targeting more on SMEs who do not really need top performance and hence, they are not super tight on performance.
How I see Fastly and Cloudflare is this.
Cloudflare is targeting more on SMEs who do not really need top performance and hence, they are not super tight on performance.
10/n
For Fastly, their enterprise clients are huge and they need something that is super customizable and fast, hence Fastly brand themselves as "built for developers by developers".
For Fastly, their enterprise clients are huge and they need something that is super customizable and fast, hence Fastly brand themselves as "built for developers by developers".
