Serverless

Serverless computing is a cloud execution model where the cloud provider dynamically manages server allocation, scaling, and infrastructure — developers deploy functions that run on demand without provisioning servers. Functions are triggered by events (HTTP requests, queue messages, schedules) and scale automatically from zero to thousands of concurrent instances. Serverless platforms include AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Vercel Functions, and Cloudflare Workers. In AI applications, serverless handles API request processing, webhook handlers, and lightweight inference, though cold starts and execution time limits can be challenging for long-running LLM calls.

Related Terms

Vercel

Next.js & Frontend

Vercel is a cloud platform optimized for deploying frontend applications, particularly Next.js, with automatic CI/CD, global CDN, serverless functions, and edge computing.

Edge Runtime

Next.js & Frontend

Edge runtime refers to lightweight JavaScript/WebAssembly execution environments deployed to edge locations (CDN nodes) around the world, enabling code to run geographically close to users with minimal latency.

AWS Lambda

Cloud & Deployment

AWS Lambda is Amazon's serverless compute service that runs code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers.

Serverless Function

Cloud & Deployment

A serverless function is a single-purpose piece of code deployed to a serverless platform that executes in response to events, automatically scaling from zero with no infrastructure management.

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