CGI provided simple dynamic web content by running a separate process per request and using environment variables for communication.
Early 2000s servers had limited CPU and memory, making websites vulnerable to overload and hug-of-death situations.
Modern multi-core servers and faster memory enable CGI processes to scale effectively across many threads.
Benchmarks on a 16-thread AMD 3700X showed CGI can serve over 2400 requests per second or more than 200 million requests per day on modest hardware.
Under Apache, CGI achieved around 2468 POST and 1959 GET requests per second; under a Go net/http server it reached approximately 2742 POST and 2469 GET requests per second.
While rarely the optimal choice today, CGI remains a viable and easy-to-deploy option for dynamic websites.
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