Resource limits
Overview
The Internet Computer uses WebAssembly as the platform for executing messages of smart contracts. Since WebAssembly is Turing-complete, it can express different kinds of computations including non-terminating computations. The Internet Computer protects against non-terminating computations by limiting the number of WebAssembly instructions and other resources per message execution. The limits depend on the message type as shown in the following table.
Resource constraints and limits
| Message resource limits | Constraint |
|---|---|
| Message queue limit, messages per canister | 500 |
| Maximum ingress message payload | 2MB |
| Maximum cross-net inter-canister message payload | 2MB |
| Maximum same-subnet inter-canister message payload (may be deprecated at some point) | 10MB |
| Maximum response size (replicated execution) | 2MB |
| Maximum response size (non-replicated execution, i.e. in query calls) | 3MB |
| Instruction resource limits | Constraint |
|---|---|
| Instruction limit, instructions per update call/heartbeat/timer | 40 Billion |
| Instruction limit, instructions per query call | 5 Billion |
| Instruction limit, instructions per canister install/upgrade | 200 Billion |
| Instruction limit, instructions per inspect_message | 200 Million |
Subnet limits | Constraint |
|---|---|
| Subnet capacity (total memory available per subnet) | 700GiB |
| Memory resource limits | Constraint |
|---|---|
| Wasm heap memory, per canister | 4GiB |
| Wasm stable memory, per canister | 400GiB |
| Wasm stable memory, data access per replicated message | 2GiB |
| Wasm stable memory, data written per replicated message | 2GiB |
| Wasm stable memory, data access per upgrade message | 8GiB |
| Wasm stable memory, data written per upgrade message | 8GiB |
| Wasm stable memory, data access per (replicated) query | 1GiB |
| Wasm stable memory, data written per (replicated) query | 1GiB |
| Wasm module limits | Constraint |
|---|---|
| Wasm total size, per canister | 100MiB |
| Wasm code section, per canister | 10MiB |
| Wasm custom sections, per subnet | 2GiB |
| Wasm custom sections, per canister | 1MiB |
| Wasm custom sections, sections per canister | 16 |
| Query call resource limits | Constraint |
|---|---|
| Query calls execution threads, per replica node | 4 |
| Query calls execution threads, per canister | 2 |
| Update call resource limits | Constraint |
|---|---|
| Update calls execution threads, per subnet | 4 |
| Update calls execution threads, per canister | 1 |
Performance limits
The block rate varies from 0.75 blocks per second to 1.5 blocks per second depending on the subnet and the number of nodes in the subnet.
Up to 1000 messages can be included in a block. Since ICP decouples message reception from message execution, the messages included in a block are not guaranteed to be executed in the same block. Messages for different canisters maybe executed in parallel on multiple threads. ICP currently has 4 execution threads and each thread can execute up to 1000 messages. Another limiting factor in execution throuhgput is the number of executed Wasm instructions. ICP currently targets 2B instructions per block.
Additional notes
The expiration time of an ingress message is specified by the agent making the request, and can be up to 5 minutes.
The Internet Computer Protocol may reject WebAssembly modules for reasons such that:
- They declare more than 50_000 functions.
- They declare more than 1_000 globals.
- They declare a function with more than 1_000_000 Wasm instructions.
- They declare more than 16 exported custom sections (the custom section names with prefix icp:).
- The number of all exported functions called
canister_update <name>orcanister_query <name>exceeds 1_000. - The sum of
<name>lengths in all exported functions calledcanister_update <name>orcanister_query <name>exceeds 20_000. - The total size of the exported custom sections exceeds 1MiB.
More information regarding these restrictions can be found in the Internet Computer interface specification.