Today Sun Microsystems announced MySQL 5.4, a release that
focuses on performance and scalability. For a long time it's been
possible to escape the confines of a single system with MySQL,
thanks to scale-out technologies like replication and sharding.
But it ought to be possible to scale-up efficiently as well - to
fully utilize the CPU resource on a server with a single
instance.
MySQL 5.4 takes a stride in that direction. It features a number
of performance and scalability fixes, including the
justifiably-famous Google SMP patch along with a range of other
fixes. And there's plenty more to come in future releases. For
specifics about the MySQL 5.4 fixes, check out Mikael
Ronstrom's blog.
So how well does MySQL 5.4 scale? To help answer the question I'm
going to take a look at some performance data from one of Sun's
CMT systems based on the UltraSPARC T2 chip. This …
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