perruntime

Perruntime is a term used in software architecture to describe the practice of scoping state, configuration, and resources to individual runtime instances. A runtime instance can be a process, container, thread group, or sandboxed execution environment. The central idea is to prevent cross-talk between runtimes and to tailor behavior to the needs of each isolated execution context.

In practice, perruntime appears in discussions of multi-tenant architectures, serverless platforms, edge computing, and plugin systems, where each runtime hosts code with its own settings, caches, and I/O handlers. The concept supports scenarios in which different workloads or tenants require distinct resource limits, language runtimes, or security policies without impacting other parts of the system.

Key characteristics include strict isolation of in-memory state, separate configuration and resource quotas, independent lifecycle management, and the ability to snapshot, migrate, or restart a single runtime without affecting others. Observability is important, with per-runtime metrics, logs, and traces that enable debugging and performance tuning at the level of each isolated environment.

Trade-offs involve increased resource overhead, more complex deployment and monitoring, and potential duplication of services or data. Coordination is often needed for shared services and data stores, which can complicate consistency guarantees. Perruntime frameworks or patterns are commonly discussed in the context of containerization, sandboxing, and plug-in ecosystems, where isolation and customization at the runtime boundary are advantageous. See also per-tenant, per-process, sandboxing, and containerization concepts.