It could be argued that this is a poor reason to switch from Erlang to C -- this is a problem with how binaries are handled in user code, not something intrinsic to Erlang VM.
Eh, every factor involved is implementation detail. The threshold at which binaries are heap-alloc'ed, gc behavior, etc. I really fail to see how this is user error.
Specifically we're working to get Erlang out of the data path. So the code where throughput and latency really matter is written by hand and compiles directly to machine code, and Erlang continues to do what it does best - manage distributed systems and asynchronous processes.
In theory a great VM could out-perform C, but after you've chased down a few Erlang VM WTFs, there's something nice about being closer to the metal.
