Eliminating JavaScript cold starts on AWS Lambda
8 days ago
- #JavaScript
- #AWS Lambda
- #WebAssembly
- Porffor is a JS engine/runtime that compiles JavaScript ahead-of-time to WebAssembly and native binaries.
- It produces tiny (<1MB) and fast (millisecond-level) binaries, unlike Node and Bun which bundle their runtime.
- Porffor binaries are significantly smaller and faster than those from Deno and Bun.
- Trade-offs include limited JS support (60% coverage) and no good I/O or Node compatibility yet.
- Porffor runs on AWS Lambda, showing ~12x faster cold starts than Node and ~4x faster than LLRT.
- Porffor is also cheaper, being over 2x cheaper than Node and almost 4x cheaper than LLRT.
- Porffor is still in pre-alpha and not ready for production, but improvements are ongoing.