In-memory Databases – Challenges and Opportunities From Software and Hardware Perspectives

The increase in the capacity of main memory coupled with the decrease in cost has fueled research in and de-velopment of in-memory databases. In recent years, the emergence of new hardware has further given rise to new challenges which have attracted a lot of attention from the research community. In particular, it is widely accepted that hardware solutions can provide promising alternatives for realizing the full potential of in-memory systems. Here, we argue that naive adoption of hard-ware solutions does not guarantee superior performance over software solutions, and identify problems in such hardware solutions that limit their performance. We also highlight the primary challenges faced by in-memory databases, and summarize their potential solutions, from both software and hardware perspectives. 1