Improving in-memory database index performance with Intel® Transactional Synchronization Extensions

The increasing number of cores every generation poses challenges for high-performance in-memory database systems. While these systems use sophisticated high-level algorithms to partition a query or run multiple queries in parallel, they also utilize low-level synchronization mechanisms to synchronize access to internal database data structures. Developers often spend significant development and verification effort to improve concurrency in the presence of such synchronization. The Intel® Transactional Synchronization Extensions (Intel® TSX) in the 4th Generation Core™ Processors enable hardware to dynamically determine whether threads actually need to synchronize even in the presence of conservatively used synchronization. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of such hardware support in a commercial database. We focus on two index implementations: a B+Tree Index and the Delta Storage Index used in the SAP HANA® database system. We demonstrate that such support can improve performance of database data structures such as index trees and presents a compelling opportunity for the development of simpler, scalable, and easy-to-verify algorithms.