The Benchmark
We conducted a comprehensive benchmark on an M3 Max MacBook Pro:
- 10,000 container startups per platform
- Standard busybox container for consistency
- Measured cold start (no caching) time
- Tested warm start (repeated runs) performance
Methodologies
Docker Desktop
- Default configuration
- OrbStack and native Docker on Mac
- Standard bridge networking
- Standard volume mounting
ArcBox
- Default Firecracker configuration
- Standard devcontainer setup
- Native networking
- Direct filesystem access
Results
Cold Start Time
| Platform | Mean | P99 | Min | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Docker Desktop | 1,247ms | 1,892ms | 1,050ms | 3,421ms |
| ArcBox | 312ms | 456ms | 289ms | 678ms |
| Speedup | 4.0x | 4.1x | 3.6x | 5.0x |
Warm Start Time
| Platform | Mean | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| Docker Desktop | 487ms | 712ms |
| ArcBox | 89ms | 156ms |
| Speedup | 5.5x | 4.6x |
Analysis
The 4-5x difference in startup time comes from:
- Lighter hypervisor - Firecracker adds ~100ms overhead vs ~400ms for Docker Desktop's VM
- Better memory management - Apple Silicon native execution
- Optimized kernel - Stripped-down guest kernel
- Smart caching - Pre-warmed filesystem snapshots
Conclusion
These benchmarks demonstrate that ArcBox is not just a Docker alternative—it's a fundamentally faster approach to containerization on Apple Silicon.