Ghostty Creator Announces Rex Terminal 10000-Session Scalability Test, Using Approximately 3.8GB

Article

The New Terminal from the Creator of Ghostty Rex running 10000 sessions at once, using only 3.8GB of memory

Beating AI news, Ghostty creator Mitchell Hashimoto has published scalability test results for a new terminal Rex's scalability.Rex It focuses on long-lived sessions and remote connections, allowing terminal tasks to continue running in the background. In this test,Rex were maintained simultaneously, with 10000 active terminal sessions, using approximately 3.8GB of memory while remaining responsive. The team has not tested further upward for now; the next target is 100000 sessions.

After reaching 10000 sessions, much of the overhead is no longer caused by the terminal itself. The first bottleneck comes from Linux's file descriptor table, where the system records files and connections opened by processes. Once the number of terminal sessions exceeds approximately 5000 sessions, each new process uses approximately 512KB more space just for this table, despite actually using only about 4 file descriptors.Rex A section of C code has now been added to shrink this space back to the amount actually required.

The other issue is threads.Rex Previously, each active terminal session occupied one thread waiting for data, creating excessive memory overhead as the scale increased. Now, if a terminal has had no read activity for 2 seconds, it is handed off to a shared thread for unified monitoring.

Original link https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/370788

Key points

Ghostty creator Mitchell Hashimoto has published a new terminal's Rex scalability test results.
Rex It focuses on long-lived sessions and remote connections, allowing terminal tasks to continue running in the background.
In the test,Rex maintained simultaneously 10000 active terminal sessions, using approximately 3.8GB of memory while remaining responsive.
The team has not expanded the test further for now; the next target is 100000 sessions.
The Linux file descriptor table becomes a bottleneck after the number of terminal sessions exceeds approximately 5000 sessions.
Rex C code has been added to reduce the file descriptor table's memory usage to the amount actually required.
Rex It now hands terminal sessions with no read activity for 2 seconds off to a shared thread for unified monitoring.

AI-assisted interpretation

The following is analysis, separate from reported facts. Verify important claims independently.

The test focuses on Rex how many terminal tasks can be managed simultaneously and how much memory is required.Rex By adjusting how file descriptor tables and threads are used, it reduces the additional overhead caused by large numbers of sessions.

Why it matters to readers

If the test results are reproducible,Rex it may be better suited to managing large numbers of long-running or remotely connected terminal tasks.

It demonstrates how terminal software can reduce memory usage while running many tasks simultaneously by sharing system resources.

Risks and unknowns

No official original test materials were provided as evidence.
The evidence does not specify the hardware, Linux distribution, or specific test conditions used for testing.
100000 The objective of the session has not yet been completed.
The evidence does not specify how this result performs in other remote connection scenarios.

Ghostty Creator Announces Rex Terminal 10000-Session Scalability Test, Using Approximately 3.8GB

Article

AI-assisted interpretation

Why it matters to readers

Risks and unknowns

Related Developments

Related concepts

Keep following

Security Center