In-memory Databases - Challenges and Opportunities

The increase in the capacity of main memory coupled with the decrease in cost has fueled research in and development 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 hardware 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.