The current implementation of persistent terms uses the literal allocator also used for literals (constant terms) in BEAM code. By default, 1 GB of virtual address space is reserved for literals in BEAM code and persistent terms. The amount of virtual address space reserved for literals can be changed by using the +MIscs option when starting the emulator.

Here is an example how the reserved virtual address space for literals can be raised to 2 GB (2048 MB):

    erl +MIscs 2048

It is recommended to use keys like ?MODULE or {?MODULE,SubKey} to avoid name collisions.

Prefer creating a few large persistent terms to creating many small persistent terms. The execution time for storing a persistent term is proportional to the number of already existing terms.

Updating a persistent term with the same value as it already has is specially optimized to do nothing quickly; thus, there is no need compare the old and new values and avoid calling put/2 if the values are equal.

When atoms or other terms that fit in one machine word are deleted, no global GC is needed. Therefore, persistent terms that have atoms as their values can be updated more frequently, but note that updating such persistent terms is still much more expensive than reading them.

Updating or deleting a persistent term will trigger a global GC if the term does not fit in one machine word. Processes will be scheduled as usual, but all processes will be made runnable at once, which will make the system less responsive until all processes have run and scanned their heaps for the deleted terms. One way to minimize the effects on responsiveness could be to minimize the number of processes on the node before updating or deleting a persistent term. It would also be wise to avoid updating terms when the system is at peak load.

Avoid storing a retrieved persistent term in a process if that persistent term could be deleted or updated in the future. If a process holds a reference to a persistent term when the term is deleted, the process will be garbage collected and the term copied to the process.

Avoid updating or deleting more than one persistent term at a time. Each deleted term will trigger its own global GC. That means that deleting N terms will make the system less responsive N times longer than deleting a single persistent term. Therefore, terms that are to be updated at the same time should be collected into a larger term, for example, a map or a tuple.

The following example shows how lock contention for ETS tables can be minimized by having one ETS table for each scheduler. The table identifiers for the ETS tables are stored as a single persistent term:

    %% There is one ETS table for each scheduler.
    Sid = erlang:system_info(scheduler_id),
    Tid = element(Sid, persistent_term:get(?MODULE)),
    ets:update_counter(Tid, Key, 1).