What is the BEAM and why does Elixir use it?

Summary

The BEAM is the Erlang virtual machine, designed for highly concurrent, fault-tolerant systems. It runs millions of lightweight, isolated processes with preemptive scheduling across cores, and supports hot code upgrades.

Longer Answer

Elixir compiles to BEAM bytecode and interoperates with Erlang libraries and OTP.

Key Points

• Lightweight isolated processes.
• Preemptive scheduling, soft real-time.
• OTP for fault tolerance.

Deep dive: Elixir Fundamentals: Processes