The Instant Clones feature is functionality built into the vSphere platform rather than a specific Horizon feature, and was made available from the vSphere 6.0 U1 release when it became a supported feature as part of Horizon.

It uses the VMware VM Fork technology to very quickly provision virtual desktop machines. An instant clone is created from an already powered on and running virtual desktop machine, called the parent virtual desktop machine, which is quiesced before the instant clone is created. This is what makes instant clones quicker to provision than linked clones and View Composer.

The instant clone shares its memory and its disk with the parent virtual desktop machine for read operations and is created immediately, and in an already powered-on state, unlike with View Composer-based linked clones that must power on as part of the creation process. As well as sharing the memory and disk with the parent virtual desktop machine, the instant clone has its own unique memory and delta disk file. The following diagram shows the instant clone's architecture:

When the end user logs off the instant clone virtual desktop machine, it is destroyed, and when the user logs on again, they will have a new instant clone created. If they need any data to persist, then they would use the Writeable Volume feature of App Volumes to deliver that functionality and UEM to manage their personalization settings.