On the scalability of the Erlang term storage

Abstract

The Erlang Term Storage (ETS) is an important component of the Erlang runtime system, especially when parallelism enters the picture, as it provides an area where processes can share data. It is therefore important that ETS's implementation is efficient, flexible, but also as scalable as possible. In this paper we document and describe the current implementation of ETS in detail, discuss the main data structures that support it, and present the main points of its evolution across Erlang/OTP releases. More importantly, we measure the scalability of its implementations, the effects of its tuning options, identify bottlenecks, and suggest changes and alternative designs that can improve both its performance and its scalability.