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cold-start-tax-experiment

Cold Start Tax: Go vs Quarkus Native vs Node.js benchmark experiment. Measures time-to-first-byte across compiled and interpreted runtimes.

goquarkusnodejsbenchmarkcold-start

Overview

Quantifies the "cold start tax" — the performance penalty paid on first request after deployment. Compares compiled native images (Go, Quarkus Native) against interpreted runtimes (Node.js).

Methodology

  • Server: 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM
  • Workload: JSON echo endpoint, 100 warmup requests + 1000 measured
  • Cold definition: Container restart between each test run

Results

| Runtime | Cold start | p99 cold | p99 warm | |---|---|---|---| | Go (net/http) | 8ms | 12ms | 0.5ms | | Quarkus Native | 18ms | 24ms | 0.8ms | | Node.js (Fastify) | 210ms | 350ms | 3ms |