Database World

In my last blog , I wrote that applications that have been running on x86 might need to undergo some adaptation if they are to be run on a different architecture such as ARM. Let's see what it means exactly. Recently I have been playing around with PostgreSQL RDBMS using an ARM64 machine. A few months back, I even didn't know whether it can be compiled on ARM, being oblivious of the fact that we already have a regular build farm member for ARM64 for quite a while . And now even the PostgreSQL apt repository has started making PostgreSQL packages available for ARM64 architecture. But the real confidence on the reliability of PostgreSQL-on-ARM came after I tested it with different kinds of scenarios. I started with read-only pgbench tests and compared the results on the x86_64 and the ARM64 VMs available to me. The aim was not to compare any specific CPU implementation. The idea was to find out scenarios where PostgreSQL on ARM does not perform in one scenario as good as

The story of ARM began in 1993 with a joint venture of Apple with ARM (then Acorn RISC Machines) to launch the "Apple Newton" handheld PC. And the story continues today with news that Apple is going to switch their MACs to ARM processors.  What has not changed in the story is ARM's reputation as a power-efficient processor. This is the primary reason why it is so popular in smarthphones, and why it has made its way into smart cars, drones and other internet-of-things devices where it is crucial to preserve battery life and minimize heat generation. Today even data centers can run on ARM. Due to such widespread market disruption happening, I thought about putting some specific points which I think are good-to-know for users and software developers who have just begun using the ARM ecosystem ... The reason why ARM power consumption is less has to do with the inherent nature of RISC architecture on which ARM is based. RISC instructions are so simple that each of them req