Benchmark CI/CD in Docker 25 vs Cilium: What You Need to Know Modern CI/CD pipelines demand high performance, low latency, and reliable networking. Two technologies often at the center of containerized workflow discussions are Docker 25 (the latest major release of the ubiquitous container runtime) and Cilium (the eBPF-powered CNI plugin for Kubernetes). While they operate at different layers of the stack, teams often evaluate both when optimizing CI/CD performance. This article breaks down our benchmark findings, key tradeoffs, and implementation guidance. Understanding the Stack: Docker 25 vs Cilium First, a quick primer: Docker 25 is a container runtime update focused on build speed, resource efficiency, and compatibility with containerd 1.7. It introduces faster image layer caching, reduced memory overhead for idle containers, and native support for Wasm containers.…