DE:LIGHT · Execution mode
DENSE · KVM nanoservice mode
Actor binaries that boot directly on KVM.
DENSE is one of two execution modes inside DE:LIGHT. A Borz actor compiles to a small flat binary that boots as a KVM guest in microseconds. There is no operating system inside the guest. The guest is the actor.
- Warm dispatch P50 · voting workload
- 200 µs
- Source language
- Borz
What this mode gives you
- Warm dispatch around 200 µs (reference voting-workload benchmark)
- Per-actor KVM isolation at the hardware level
- Signed receipt per invocation
- `@persistent var` state, snapshotted by the host
- Thousands of actors per host
Pairs with
DE:LIGHT DEMIX DE:SH
How it compares
Unikernel and microVM serverless
- Unikraft Cloud
- Unikernels for arbitrary applications. Rich tooling, broader scope.
- Fastly Compute@Edge
- WebAssembly at the edge. Strong cold-start, very wide distribution.
- Cloudflare Workers
- V8 isolates. Different isolation model; massive footprint.
Where we focus
DENSE narrows the scope: actor-shaped programs only, no Linux guest, no general-purpose POSIX. The narrow scope is what makes the warm dispatch fast and the receipt simple.