November 17, 2023

104. Explaining Lambda Runtimes

25 minutes

In this episode, we celebrate AWS Lambda's 9th birthday by taking a deep dive into Lambda runtimes. We discuss how Lambda works, compare official runtimes vs. custom runtimes, and explain when and why building a custom runtime might be worth the effort. We talk through how custom runtimes work, options for deploying them, and potential use cases where they could be beneficial over standard runtimes.

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In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

The original announcement launching AWS Lambda in 2014: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2014/11/13/introducing-aws-lambda/

List of official Lambda runtimes: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-runtimes.html

Library implementing the Rust runtime: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-rust-runtime

Library implementing the Go runtime: https://github.com/aws/aws-lambda-go/

Library implementing the C++ runtime: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-cpp

Third-party PHP runtime (Bref): https://bref.sh/

Third-party Swift runtime: https://github.com/swift-server/swift-aws-lambda-runtime

Official documentation on how to build a custom runtime: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtimes-custom.html

An official tutorial on how to build a custom runtime: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtimes-walkthrough.html

List of all the environment variables available to a runtime: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/configuration-envvars.html#configuration-envvars-runtime

Lambda Response Streaming official docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtimes-custom.html#runtimes-custom-response-streaming

Our previous episode on Lambda Response Streaming: https://awsbites.com/77-how-do-you-use-lambda-response-streaming/

On-demand Container Loading in AWS Lambda (paper): https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.13162

Deep dive on container support for AWS Lambda (Eoin's article): https://dev.to/eoinsha/container-image-support-in-aws-lambda-deep-dive-2keh

When is the Lambda Init Phase Free, and when is it Billed? (article by Luc van Donkersgoed): https://lucvandonkersgoed.com/2022/04/09/when-is-the-lambda-init-phase-free-and-when-is-it-billed/⁠

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