Category Archives: benchmark

Timescale is leading the next wave of NYC database tech

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Data is the lifeblood of the modern corporation, yet acquiring, storing, processing, and analyzing it remains a remarkably challenging and expensive project. Every time data infrastructure finally catches up with the streams of information pouring in, another source and more demanding decision-making makes the existing technology obsolete. Few cities rely on data the same way […] Continue reading Timescale is leading the next wave of NYC database tech→

Lowering JavaScript Timer Resolution Thwarts Meltdown and Spectre

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The computer security vulnerabilities Meltdown and Spectre can infer protected information based on subtle differences in hardware behavior. It takes less time to access data that has been cached versus data that needs to be retrieved from memory, and precisely measuring time difference is a critical part of these attacks.

Our web browsers present a huge potential surface for attack as JavaScript is ubiquitous on the modern web. Executing JavaScript code will definitely involve the processor cache and a high-resolution timer is accessible via browser performance API.

Web browsers can’t change processor cache behavior, but they could take away malicious …read more

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Cockroach Labs announces $27M Series B and enterprise tier for its reliable database

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 “A database that replicates itself and is meant to survive” — that was the connection that Cockroach Labs CEO Spencer Kimball made between the startup’s memorable name and its value proposition. Despite entering a crowded market, Cockroach has been able to gain the favor of some of the most well known VCs in tech. Today’s $27 million Series B is being led by… Read More Continue reading Cockroach Labs announces $27M Series B and enterprise tier for its reliable database→

A stealthy startup called Cerebras raised around $25 million to build deep learning hardware

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chip Benchmark is doing another big investment before the end of the year, and this time it’s in a hardware startup called Cerebras Systems. From what we hear from sources, the round (which we heard others were participating in) is somewhere around $25 million, though it could be as high as $30 million. Details on the company are extremely sparse — we can’t even really find… Read More Continue reading A stealthy startup called Cerebras raised around $25 million to build deep learning hardware→

BeagleBone Pin-Toggling Torture Test

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Benchmarks often get criticized for their inability to perfectly model the real-world situations that we’d like them to. So take what follows in the limited scope that it’s intended, and don’t read too much into it. [Joonas Pihlajamaa]’s experiments with toggling a hardware pin as fast as possible on different single-board computers can still show us something.

The take-home result won’t surprise anyone who’s worked with a single-board computer: the higher-level interfaces are simply slow compared to direct memory-mapped GPIO access. But really slow. We’re talking around 5 kHz from Python or any of the file-based interfaces to the pins …read more

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