Cache craftiness for fast multicore key-value storage

Abstract

We present Masstree, a fast key-value database designed for SMP machines. Masstree keeps all data in memory. Its main data structure is a trie-like concatenation of B+-trees, each of which handles a fixed-length slice of a variable-length key. This structure effectively handles arbitrary-length possiblybinary keys, including keys with long shared prefixes. +-tree fanout was chosen to minimize total DRAM delay when descending the tree and prefetching each tree node. Lookups use optimistic concurrency control, a read-copy-update-like technique, and do not write shared data structures; updates lock only affected nodes. Logging and checkpointing provide consistency and durability. Though some of these ideas appear elsewhere, Masstree is the first to combine them. We discuss design variants and their consequences.