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 ...