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Falcon from the Beginning

Explore why Falcon is the ideal choice amidst evolving hardware trends, addressing the need for ACID transactions; efficient, isolated, and durable solutions for modern applications; and the innovative Falcon architecture optimizing performance.

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Falcon from the Beginning

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  1. Falcon from the Beginning • Jim Starkey • jstarkey@mysql.com

  2. Why Falcon?Because the World is Changing! • Hardware is evolving rapidly • Customers need ACID transactions • Atomic – the books should balance • Consistent – the alternative is chaos • Isolated – preserve programmer’s sanity(sic) • Durable – who wants to lose data?

  3. Where Hardware is going • CPUs breed like rabbits – more sockets, more cores per socket, more threads per core • Memory is bigger, faster, and cheaper • Disks are bigger and cheaper but not much faster • (Boxes are cheaper and more plentiful, but that’s a different story)

  4. Where Applications are going • Batch – dead! • Timesharing – dead! • Departmental computing – dead! • Client server – fading fast • Application servers for most of us • Web services for the really big guys

  5. The Database challenge • Traditional challenge: • Exhaust CPU, memory, and disk simultaneously • Today’s challenge: • Exhaust CPU and memory and avoid the disk

  6. Falcon tradeoffs • Use memory (page cache) to avoid disk reads • Use memory (record cache) to avoid the page cache manipulation. • Use CPU to find the fastest path to a record • Use CPU to minimize record size • Synchronize most data structures with user mode read/write locks • Synchronize high contention data structures with interlocked instructions.

  7. The Falcon architecture • Incomplete in-memory database with disk backfill • Multi-version concurrency control in memory • Updates in memory until commit • Group commits to a single serial log write • Post-commit multi-threaded pipe line to move updates to disk

  8. Incomplete in-memory database • Selected records cached in memory • Separate cache for disk pages • Record cache hit is 15% the cost of a page cache hit • Record cache is more memory efficient than page cache

  9. Record Encoding - Cache Efficiency • Records encoded by value, not declaration • String “abc” occupies the same space in varchar(3) or varchar(4096) • The number 7 is the same where small, medium, int, bigint, decimal, or numeric

  10. Multi-Version Concurrency Control • Update operations create new record versions • New version is tagged with transaction id, points to old version • System tracks which transactions should see which versions • Readers don’t block writers • Everyone sees a consistent view of the data

  11. Updates Are in Memory Until Commit • Updates held in memory pending commit (well, usually) • Index changes held in memory pending commit (same caveat) • Verb rollback is dirt cheap • Transaction rollback is dirt cheap

  12. At Commit… • Pending record updates flushed to serial log • Pending index updates flushed to serial log • Commit record written to serial log • Serial log flushed to the oxide • And the transaction is committed!

  13. Alas, Memory isn’t infinite, so • Large transaction chills uncommitted data (flushes it to the log early) • Chilled records can be thawed (fetched from the log) • Scavenger garbage collects unloved records periodically • When things get really bad, entire record chains flushed to backlog • (Note: This is hard and we aren’t done.)

  14. Falcon Weaknesses • Transactions are ACID but not serializable • Latency advantage disappears at saturation • Very large transactions degrade performance • Optimized for Web, not batch

  15. Falcon Strengths • Runs like a memory database when data fits in cache • Scales like disk-based database when data doesn’t fit in cache • Lowest possible latency for Web applications • Absorbs huge spiky loads

  16. Performance Measurement • Generally benchmark against InnoDB (transactional engines) • We use the DBT2 benchmark: • High contention • Write intensive – 40% records touched are updated • Measures only performance at saturation • DBT2 (we believe) is InnoDB’s best spot and Falcon’s worst

  17. Benchmarking Results • 16 & 8 cpu system: Falcon exceeds InnoDB performance • 4 cpu systems: Falcon exceeds InnoDB performance for moderate to large number of threads • 2 cpu systems: Rough parity, advantage to InnoDB • 1 cpu systems: InnoDB wins • Caveat: Results subject to change! Both systems are moving targets!!!

  18. When should you use what? • If you don’t need ACID, MyISAM is probably fastest • For Uniprocessors and small memory systems, InnoDB is a good choice • For large transaction batch, InnoDB may be best match • For multi-cores and large number of threads, Falcon is probably best • For the Web, Falcon is hard to beat.

  19. Questions?

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