Hi all,
Kind of a followup to my question: PostgreSQL, Asynchronous I/O,
Buffered I/O and why did fsync-gate not affect Oracle or MySQL?, I
have another. The blog below kinda got me thinking about all of this.
I have an interest in NewSQL distributed systems - in particular
CockroachDB, TiDB and YugaByte.
Their architectures are fairly similar - hardly surprising since they
are all (partially) F/LOSS clones of the Google Spanner/F1 systems.
They use an underlying KV store and put an SQL interface above that
and use a Raft (or other) consensus algorithm to coordinate and
whatnot.
While perusing the interweb, I stumbled on this very interesting blog
post from TiDB.
https://pingcap.com/blog/tikv-and-spdk-pushing-the-limits-of-storage-performance
It talks about the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) (spdk.io).
The blog appears to think this system is a panacea and manna from
heaven rolled into one:
> This solution solves the four problems we mentioned earlier: it removes the syscall overhead, uses data structures
andcaching algorithms more suitable for databases and NVMe disks, and simplifies file system logging.
Given that many/most database processing is I/O bound, I'm just
wondering if this system is all it's cracked up to be, or are we at
the "Mass Media Hype Begins" and am I about to jump off the cliff edge
of the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" and fall headlong into the
Trough of Disillusionment? (see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle).
Will this have any implications for PostgreSQL, given that it is a db
that compiles/runs on a large number of systems - or can subsystems
such as this be integrated/included for those chips which support it?
This particular SDK appears to be Intel specific, but if one chip
manufacturer can do it, can't they all (eventually)?
If this isn't the appropriate forum for discussing these matters, then
please indicate a suitable forum.
TIA and rgs,
Pól Ua...