Ops & agents
Performance
An 18 ms cold boot, a 1.2 ms warm claim, a 7.8 ms restore and 50 VMs running in 125 ms.
FlashVMM performance is the time and memory a FlashVM costs on each platform: a full virtual machine with its own kernel in 18 ms, a warm VM claimed in 1.2 ms, a running program restored in 7.8 ms and fifty VMs running in 125 ms.
Every figure is wall time seen by the caller around the real flash command, except cold boot, which the VMM measures from kernel start to a running guest. Each is the median, with the 99th percentile in parentheses, on macOS, Linux and Windows, x86 and ARM, from laptops to cloud bare metal.
Key facts
| Cold boot | 18 ms (macOS) |
|---|---|
| Warm claim | 1.2 ms (Linux x86, cloud bare metal) |
| Snapshot restore | 7.8 ms (Linux ARM, cloud bare metal) |
| Live fork | 36 ms (macOS) |
| Wake from sleep | 8.4 ms (Linux x86, cloud bare metal) |
| Idle VM footprint | 27 MB of host memory for a 256 MB VM (Linux ARM) |
| Burst | 50 VMs running in 125 ms (Linux x86, cloud bare metal) |
The numbers
| Measure | macOS | Linux x86 | Linux x86, cloud bare metal | Linux ARM, cloud bare metal | Linux ARM (Raspberry Pi 5) | Windows x86 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cold boot, kernel to running | 18 ms (19) | 42 ms (46) | 42 ms (50) | 63 ms (64) | 92 ms (112) | 212 ms (224) |
| Create to first command output | 60 ms (65) | 71 ms (79) | 70 ms (72) | 90 ms (90) | 94 ms (115) | 250 ms (262) |
| Claim a warm VM from a pool | 2.0 ms | 2.0 ms | 1.2 ms | 1.3 ms | 3.0 ms | 6.9 ms |
| Restore a snapshot to running | 27 ms (29) | 26 ms (29) | 17 ms (20) | 7.8 ms (8.3) | 30 ms (32) | 45 ms (77) |
| Fork a running VM, child running | 36 ms (43) | 45 ms (78) | 40 ms (64) | 58 ms (111) | 166 ms (213) | 38 ms (69) |
| Wake a sleeping VM to running | 27 ms | 11 ms | 8.4 ms | 19 ms | 31 ms | 39 ms |
| Host memory per idle VM (256 MB given) | 69 MB | 44 MB | 45 MB | 27 MB | 27 MB | 42 MB |
| 50 VMs started at once, all running | 214 ms | 338 ms | 125 ms | 274 ms | 2.5 s | 1.0 s |
How it works
- A fresh VM for every task. An 18 ms cold boot and a 1.2 ms warm claim mean a new, isolated machine costs less time than the request that asked for it. See the process model and warm pools.
- Pick up exactly where you left off. A snapshot restore brings a running program back in 7.8 ms, and a sleeping VM wakes in 8.4 ms. See snapshot format and restore.
- Try many ideas from one setup. A live fork copies a running VM, memory, disk and processes, into a new one in 36 ms. See fork internals.
- Dense by default. An idle VM given 256 MB uses as little as 27 MB of real host memory, and 50 VMs come up together in 125 ms. See the memory model.
- Security without a speed tax. Per-VM network rules run on every packet outside the guest at full speed: 1,751 vs 1,679 Mbit/s with rules on and off. See the egress engine.
Interfaces
CLI
flash demo benchRuns the same measurements on your own hardware and prints the median, 99th percentile and minimum for each.
Guarantees
- Same commands, every platform. Each figure comes from the real
flashCLI, the same command a user runs. - Full VMs. Every figure is a complete virtual machine with its own Linux kernel.
- One source. Every figure on this site is in the facts table.