Efficiency
How ArcBox minimizes CPU, memory, and battery usage.
Design Philosophy
ArcBox treats efficiency as a structural property, not a tuning knob. Low resource usage comes from architecture decisions, not from asking users to configure limits.
Idle Behavior
When no containers are running, ArcBox consumes minimal resources:
| Resource | Idle Usage |
|---|---|
| CPU | ~0% |
| Memory | <150 MB |
| Disk I/O | None |
| Network | None |
The VM pauses when idle and resumes instantly when you start a container. There is no background polling, indexing, or sync when nothing is running.
Dynamic Scaling
Resources scale with actual demand:
- CPU — virtual cores are shared with the host. Containers get CPU time when they need it and yield it when idle.
- Memory — the VM uses only the memory containers actively require. Freed memory is returned to the host.
- Disk — the virtual disk grows on demand and does not pre-allocate space.
Battery Impact
ArcBox is designed for laptop use. When idle, it has near-zero battery impact. Active workloads use CPU efficiently through Apple Silicon's native performance cores.
Compared to Docker Desktop
Docker Desktop runs a full Linux VM that consumes memory even when idle, polls for file changes continuously, and keeps background services running. ArcBox avoids all of these patterns.
See Benchmarks for specific numbers.