MySQL feast on Sun CMT to benefit Intel

MySQL is making use of easy internal access to Sun hardware to give it a head-start to run on future Intel-based commodity multi-core servers.

Speaking to iTnews as part of a whirlwind visit to Australia, principal engineer (and former CTO) for MySQL, Brian Aker, said his team is currently optimising MySQL for Sun’s chip multi-threading (CMT) technology - a move it hopes will lead to a market advantage in the forthcoming era of large-scale, commodity, multi-core servers.

Aker believes the work that MySQL’s engineering team is doing will ultimately benefit users of commodity Intel-based multi-core servers when they ‘catch up’ with the core capacity boasted in some current high-end SPARC-based system configurations.

“Intel servers are starting to get to 16-core configurations, if we can target 256-core configurations now it will be a super benefit for us in the future,” said Aker.

“Intel needs software that runs on multi-core as much as Sun does, and neither company is sitting still.

“[Us] targeting the high-end now gives Intel the knowledge that there’s going to be a database ready when their commodity multi-core configurations catch up,” said Aker.

MySQL is also looking at ways to re-implement the database’s threading system as part of the Drizzle project launched in July.

Drizzle is a new microkernel for MySQL that is attempting to map out the next major evolution for the open source database.

“The jury is still out on how much of Drizzle will find its way into the main binary of MySQL and how much will stay within the project,” said Jim Guerrero, a Texas-based senior product manager at Sun Microsystems.

The more immediate future of MySQL is wrapped up in version 5.1, for which the release date is said to be ‘imminent’.

When pressed, Aker clarified the intention was to have the new version out within the current quarter.

New features are said to include support for partitioning, a new row-based replication system and XML functions.

Aker is understood to be visiting Sun customers in Brisbane today before continuing his worldwide trip Sunday.