What Is NGINX & What Is It Used For? (2026)

1. **High Memory Consumption:** Each process or thread requires a certain amount of RAM. For thousands of connections, this can add up to gigabytes of memory, even if many of those connections are idle (e.g., a user slowly reading a webpage). 2. **CPU Overhead from Context Switching:** The operating system’s CPU scheduler has to constantly switch between these hundreds or thousands of active processes/threads, giving each a small slice of CPU time. This context switching is computationally expensive and creates significant overhead, taking away CPU cycles that could be used for actual work.