PERFORMANCE Signal 503
Bifrost removes musl prebuilt option after benchmarks show 26% slowdown even with mimalloc
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Benchmarks on 4-core EC2 VMs show musl's allocator and memory routines cause significant slowdowns, leading the author to drop musl as a prebuilt option for Bifrost.
Engineers using musl for Rust projects may see significant performance regressions even on modest hardware. Swapping in mimalloc does not close the gap, so performance-sensitive services should benchmark carefully before adopting musl.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
musl's allocator is 'terrible' even on 4-core EC2 VMs, not just in high-concurrency scenarios.
Replacing the allocator with mimalloc still leaves musl 26% slower than glibc.
The author is removing musl as a prebuilt option from Bifrost while keeping it for smaller projects with mimalloc.
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