Also known as: FaaS, Functions as a service
Serverless computing is a cloud computing model in which code runs in short-lived, provider-managed environments triggered by events; it scales automatically and bills only for actual execution, with no servers to provision.1
Overview
The name is a slight misnomer — servers still exist, but the developer never sees or manages them. You upload a function; the platform runs it on demand when an event fires (an HTTP request, a queue message, a timer), spins up containers to handle load, and tears them down afterward. Because idle functions cost nothing, serverless can scale to zero between bursts. The trade-offs are cold-start latency, execution time limits, and statelessness — long-running or stateful work fits poorly.
Where it fits
Serverless is the most abstract way to run your own code, sitting above platform as a service by removing even the notion of a running process you manage. Its automatic scalability suits bursty, event-driven workloads. GopherTrunk’s decode loop is continuous and tied to live RF, so it is a poor fit for serverless, but occasional tasks — sending an alert when a talkgroup appears — map naturally onto a function.
Sources
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Serverless computing — Wikipedia, on the serverless and FaaS model. ↩