Tag: Intel

  • Protect your data with MariaDB Server and Intel® TDX

    In 2023, Intel launched Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (Intel® TDX), their latest Confidential Computing technology that ensures data in use protection for hardware-isolated virtual machines and verified hardware and software integrity through attestation.

    In this blog post, we will show that MariaDB Server can run correctly on an Intel® TDX enabled VM and that the in-memory data is protected from outside actors, even from the host OS running the VM. By coupling Intel’s Confidential Computing technology with MariaDB Server build […]

  • Intel improving the performance of MariaDB Vector

    As you have probably seen in earlier posts, the preview version of MariaDB Vector is out and ready for you to play with. We have had input from several different places during the development of this feature. This, of course, includes hardware manufacturers such as Intel.

    In the background, Intel have been prototyping using AVX512 instructions for dot product and bloom filter. Both of these are functions are part of vector searches. If you haven’t heard of these terms, let […]

  • How Intel helps MariaDB become even faster

    Intel logo

    There are many forums in the past couple of years where I have talked about how non-code contributions are just as important to MariaDB Server and us at the MariaDB Foundation as the code contributions I typically help with. I’ve also highlighted in the past how Intel have provided some fantastic non-code contributions. They assist us by detecting performance issues on their new and future platforms, as well guidance in finding the root cause of these issues.

    The outcome: Over […]

  • Accelerating MariaBackup with Intel QuickAssist

    With Intel QuickAssist Technology, you can see a 5x performance in your MariaBackup compression, and lower CPU usage as well. Today I’m going to show you how.

    What is Intel QuickAssist?

    Nearly a decade ago, Intel released a technology called QuickAssist, which started out as a PCI-e card and then became integrated in many Xeon processes starting with the Skylake generation. QuickAssist Technology (often called QAT) is a special unit that the CPU can offload compression and encryption tasks onto.

  • The value of sponsoring MariaDB Foundation

    The value of sponsoring MariaDB Foundation

    Why does Intel sponsor the MariaDB Foundation? I had the opportunity to interview Steve Shaw, Principal Engineer at Intel and a Board Member at MariaDB Foundation.

    I strongly urge you to look at the 09:34 long video on YouTube – Steve is well articulated and a pleasure to listen to. Still, here is a glimpse of what he goes into:

    1. MariaDB Server is incredibly popular software. Just the Docker image alone has had more than a billion downloads. The majority of MariaDB installations run on Intel servers and developers coding on Intel laptops and desktops. Intel wants to show commitment to MariaDB users getting the best experience built-in.
    2. The open source business model is shifting from funding through enterprise features and support to managed services. With this shift a lot of open source is becoming fully Free and therefore a Foundation type approach funded by sponsorship is essential so that the software can be independent of a particular managed service – but it only works if partners such as Intel commit to sponsor the development of this underlying software.
    3. With this new model Intel can collaborate with like minded people and business. Contributions are not just code – have a look at our blog about non-code contributions by Intel.
  • MariaDB Non-Code Contributions by Intel

    Intel logo

    I’ve mentioned in past blog posts that not every contribution is a code contribution. There are many possible contributions that are valuable, including testing, bug reports, helping the community, etc.

    Non-code contributions are quite invisible

    Unfortunately, non-code contributions are sometimes invisible to the wider community, so today I wanted to shine a light on some such contributions. In this case, contributions made by one of our sponsors, Intel.

    Intel is open source friendly

    Intel have been an open source friendly […]