Show HN: Pogocache – Fast caching software

(github.com)

87 points | by tidwall a day ago ago

29 comments

  • drewda a day ago ago

    Always great to see his open-source creations, like:

    - a Redis like cache purpose built for real-time spatial locations: https://tile38.com/

    - go package for reading JSON: https://github.com/tidwall/gjson

    • tidwall a day ago ago

      Glad to bring another one into this world.

  • simonw a day ago ago

    I thought I recognized the tidwall name - Josh is also responsible for tg which is a really neat, very tight C geospatial library: https://github.com/tidwall/tg

    • tidwall a day ago ago

      Thanks you for the blog post about TG when it came out.

  • simonw a day ago ago

    Supporting HTTP, Redis and PostgreSQL protocols at the same time is a neat trick!

      psql -h localhost -p 9401
      => SET mykey 'my value';
      => GET mykey;
      => DEL mykey;
    • tidwall a day ago ago

      The protocols are autodetected. No need to carry multiple ports around.

  • jasonthorsness a day ago ago

    The README doesn’t seem to explain _why_ it is faster. Is it just highly hand-optimized? Is there some main technique used?

    • tidwall a day ago ago

      Yes, it is highly hand optimized. There's a description of some of the methods I used near the bottom of there README. I mainly focused on minimizing contention, with the sharded hashmap and such. But the networking layer is carefully crafted.

  • stevelacy a day ago ago

    Congrats on launching! Was following along with the development, glad to see it launched

    • tidwall a day ago ago

      Thanks Steve. Your feedback was very helpful.

  • zikani_03 10 hours ago ago

    Always excited to see Josh's projects - last time I played with uhaha (loved the name) and it was mind-opening to some extent. Pogocache also looks very interesting and good to see the benchmarks on ARM

  • lormayna a day ago ago

    Is the name related to Tadej Pogacar?

    • cedricium a day ago ago

      Hah I had the same question! Thought the project was aptly named if referring to the cycling champ if that’s what it was meant to be.

    • philipajohnston a day ago ago

      +1

    • tidwall a day ago ago

      No

  • Imustaskforhelp a day ago ago

    Really looks fascinating.. Might need a deeper dive.

    Also.. like, it says that you plan on supporting sql? is this true? What does that actually mean really since I guess it might then compete with things like sqlite/duckdb?

    Genuinely curious, great project! Starred!

    • tidwall a day ago ago

      Not intending to make pogocache into a sql database. I prefer keeping it a cache. More so exploring ways to work with existing databases such as sqlite, duckdb, postgres. Kinda like providing proxy-ish operations that transparently cache sql reads.

  • squirrellous a day ago ago

    Congrats! Would you mind sharing what part of the design makes this faster than the competitors?

    • tidwall a day ago ago

      Thanks! The Pogocache sharded hashmap design is optimized for extremely low contention and good memory locality. It super rare for any two threads to ever wait on the same key. That's the biggest part and it's all in the src/pogocache.c file. But the network layer is finely tuned too.

      Mostly I perfed and profiled ad nauseam, monitoring cpu cycles along the way. I found that keeping a focus on latency and cycles was primo, and the rest fell into place.

  • nodesocket a day ago ago

    Very interesting. Like the idea of using http, redis, or even PostgreSQL clients.

    Is there a way to provide the auth password via an envar instead of a command line arg?

        pogocache --auth mypass
    • tidwall a day ago ago

      That's the only way right now. The other ways I'm considering is with an environment variable and/or acl.

      • sureglymop a day ago ago

        May I suggest the ability to specific a path to a file that it is then read from.

        • tidwall a day ago ago

          Like an ACL file?

          • sureglymop 16 hours ago ago

            No, like a path to a file containing the secret/passphrase that the program can then read it from. I am not a fan of putting secrets directly into environment variables.

            Environment variables are prone to leak or be passed to child processes when it is not desired. But if they are just a file path/pointer to where the secret is, that is mitigated somewhat as one then would still need access to that file.

  • SquidJack a day ago ago

    very nice

    • CyberDildonics a day ago ago

      What is nice about it? You have 9 comments over 3.5 years and they are all promoting your chat bot start up.

    • tidwall a day ago ago

      Thanks!