A cold start occurs when a serverless function hasn’t run for a while, so the platform needs to spin up a fresh container to execute it. This can cause delays ranging from milliseconds to a few seconds. While typically brief, cold starts can impact latency-sensitive applications. Developers mitigate cold starts using techniques like function warming or keeping lightweight stateless functions. Despite being a minor annoyance, it’s a unique quirk of serverless computing that challenges expectations of instant execution.
Cold start delays affect application performance, particularly for real-time services. Optimizing code can reduce this impact.
Understanding cold starts informs architectural decisions for latency-critical applications. Developers design smarter systems knowing when delays might occur.
Cold starts happen when serverless functions “wake up” after inactivity, introducing small delays.
[IBM Cloud, ibm.com/cloud]