Swarm64: Open source PostgreSQL on steroids

PostgreSQL is a big deal. The most common SQL open source database that you have never heard of, as ZDNet's own Tony Baer called it. Besides being the framework on which a number of commercial offerings were built, PostgreSQL has a user base of its own. According to DB Engines, PostgreSQL is the 4th most popular database in the world.

Swarm64, on the other hand, is a small vendor. So small, actually, that we have shared the stage with CEO Thomas Richter in a local Berlin Meetup a few years back. Back then, Richter was not CEO, and Swarm64 was even smaller. But its value proposition still sounded attractive: boost PostgreSQL's performance for free. Swarm64 is an acceleration layer for PostgreSQL.

There's no such thing as a free lunch of course, so the "for free" part is a figure of speech. Swarm64 is a commercial vendor. Until recently, however, the real gotcha was hardware: Swarm64 Database Acceleration (DA) required a specialized chip called FPGA to be able to do its PostgreSQL magic. With Swarm64 DA 4.0 released today, that's no longer the case.

Accelerating PostgreSQL
First, a little bit of history. Why choose to accelerate PostgreSQL? Certainly, an open source database makes sense for many reasons, and PostgreSQL is popular. So to make it more concrete: why not MySQL, PostgreSQL's rival, which is even more popular?

When Swarm64 DA was initially developed, the question was considered, said Richter. PostgreSQL was finally chosen, "because it's a wonderfully extensible database, which helped us bring Swarm64 DA to market sooner -- as an extension to the database rather than a fork".

Having been acquainted with earlier versions of Swarm64 DA, the difference in this one stood out: no FPGA necessary. Richter ascertained that Swarm64 DA 4.0 is a software-only solution, requiring no hardware upgrades whatsoever. So how does it work then?

A primary feature of Swarm64 DA is its ability to add more parallel processing to PostgreSQL queries, and that can be done with or without the FPGA, said Richter. In lab tests, he went on to add, CPU-only acceleration on a 1 terabyte TPC-H database is 10x; adding an FPGA nearly doubles that. The FPGA benefits, relative to CPU only, increase as the database size or number of concurrent users rises.

Read full article >>>