Introducing FlashBoot: 1-Second Serverless Cold-Start

Runpod has introduced FlashBoot, an optimization layer designed to reduce cold-start times for GPU-intensive tasks, as part of its serverless journey aimed at enhancing efficiency and performance without additional costs. FlashBoot manages deployment, tear-down, and scale-up activities in real-time, achieving cold-starts as low as 500 milliseconds, particularly benefiting popular endpoints. For instance, in tests with the Whisper endpoint, FlashBoot reduced cold-start costs by over 70% and improved response times, with 95% of cold-starts under 2.3 seconds. FlashBoot is expected to be effective for various workloads, including LLMs, and users can enable it when creating or editing endpoints. Further testing with LLM functionality is planned, with more serverless features anticipated in the future.