Modern day cloud native applications have become broadly representative of distributed systems in the wild. However, unlike traditional distributed system models with conceptually static designs, cloud-native systems emphasize dynamic scaling and on-line iteration (CI/CD). Cloud-native systems tend to be architected around a networked collection of distinct programs ("microservices") that can be added, removed, and updated in real-time.
Typically, distinct containerized programs constitute individual microservices that then communicate among the larger distributed application through heavy-weight protocols. Common communication stacks exchange JSON or XML objects over HTTP, via TCP/TLS, and incur significant overhead, particularly when using small size message sizes. Additionally, interpreted/JIT/VM-based languages such as Javascript (NodeJS/Deno), Java, and Python are dominant in modern microservice programs. These language technologies, along with the high-overhead messaging, can impose superlinear cost increases (hardware demands) on scale-out, particularly towards hyperscale and/or with latency-sensitive workloads.
A survey on techniques for improving the energy efficiency of large-scale distributed systems
