Cold Start

Definitions

1. The latency penalty when a serverless function or container must be initialized from scratch — loading the runtime, dependencies, and application code before handling the first request. Can add 100ms to several seconds depending on language and bundle size. Mitigated by provisioned concurrency or keeping functions warm.

   In plain English: The delay when a serverless function needs to start up from scratch before it can handle your request.

   Example: "The Java Lambda has a 3-second cold start — switch to a compiled language or enable provisioned concurrency for the payment endpoint."

Related Terms

• infrastructure as code
• Allocator
• Auto-scaling
• Big-O
• Edge Function
• Lambda Function
• Scale Up
• Cloud CDN