How Vercel Rebuilt Its Edge Network for Sub-50ms Cold Starts
The CTO Podcast with Fexingo · 2026-06-10 · 10 min
Episode notes
Lucas and Luna dive into how Vercel redesigned its edge compute layer to achieve cold-start latencies under 50 milliseconds, even for complex serverless functions. They unpick the architecture behind Vercel's 'Edge Functions' - from isolate pooling and Wasm-based sandboxing to regional pre-warming. The hosts discuss the trade-offs between JavaScript and Rust runtimes, how Vercel collaborates with Cloudflare on WinterJS, and why sub-50ms cold starts matter for real-time personalisation at scale. A concrete look at the engineering decisions that let developers run logic at the network edge without the traditional cold-start tax. #Vercel #EdgeComputing #Serverless #ColdStarts #Wasm #WinterJS #Cloudflare #Rust #JavaScript #PerformanceEngineering #CDN #WebAssembly #IsolatePooling #RegionalPreWarming #RealTimePersonalisation #Business #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo
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