Apple Acquires 'Rock-Solid High-Performance' Database Company FoundationDB

[MacRumors]

Apple has acquired database company FoundationDB, reports TechCrunch. FoundationDB is a company that "develops scalable and fault tolerant databases that support multiple data models." A notice on the company's site says that it has ceased to offer downloads after deciding to "evolve [the] company mission."

According to TechCrunch, FoundationDB may have been an attractive purchase for Apple due to its ability to handle ACID-compliant transactions quickly and its strong scalability. A company blog post suggested it could achieve 54 billion writes per hour at a cost-per-write of 3 nanodollars.

FoundationDB's attractiveness came in the speed at which it handled ACID-compliant transactions and coupled that with strong scalability. FoundationDB hosted a booth at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012, where we first wrote about its approach to a modern NoSQL database and its 'NoSQL, YesACID' motto. FoundationDB's latest engine, which was covered by TC Columnist Jon Evans late last year, scaled up 14.4 million random writes per second.

TechCrunch describes FoundationDB as a "fast, affordable and durable database company" that may have been acquired to boost Apple's server-side technologies for the App Store, iTunes Connect, iTunes in the Cloud, or another service.

Apple confirmed the acquisition with the standard statement that it gives on purchases: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Article Link: Apple Acquires 'Rock-Solid High-Performance' Database Company FoundationDB

 

[Seppentoni]

What the heck are nano dollars?

 

[MathBunny123]

What the heck are nano dollars?

10^−9 ... very very very very small.

 

[Supacon]

Shut up and take my... nanodollars!

 

[mrgraff]

What the heck are nano dollars?

1 nano dollar = 100 nano cents

 

[chucker23n1]

1 nano dollar = 100 nano cents

A hundred billion nano dollars = almost an iPod nano!

 

[TouchMint.com]

This is very exciting for their ever growing and slowing App Store!

 

[Digital Skunk]

This is good news because Apple needs to fix some of the bugs in iCloud.

When it works it's amazing but when it doesn't ....

 

[elmateo487]

10^−9 ... very very very very small.

Wow that's a small dollar. How am I going to fold it into my money clip.

 

[Ganesha]

What the heck are nano dollars?

A witty response, next time someone says Apple has 100's of gigadollars in bank this is a rounding error for them.

 

[Four oF NINE]

Would this be in association with iCloud and/or Apple pay?

(Nanodollar = one billionth of one dollar)

 

[Moonlight]

What the heck are nano dollars?

I bought my iPod with them...my iPod Naaaaaaano!

 

[MacVista]

Dear former customers of Rock-Solid…
Your trust in our Rock-Solid products is no longer rock-solid, literally.
Sorry to shatter your plans, but we ceased operations.
We have been assimilated.

 

[ProwlingTiger]

Maybe now iCloud mail will improve. I still can't search for messages on the web interface or my iOS devices…errors every time. Sad.

 

[japanime]

What the heck are nano dollars?

I have no idea either.

This article flunks Journalism 101. The writer tosses about arcane industry jargon and assumes the readers will understand every word of it.

C'mon, Arn. Shouldn't we expect better from Macrumors scribes? Or is it because you paying them nano-peanuts?

 

[prasand]

Odd, as it seems like Apple's first serious foray into NoSQL, but I can't fathom why they wouldn't have leveraged it prior. Regardless, it's good news for Apple and its customers, and perhaps bad news for those that relied on FoundationDB's ACIDity.

What the heck are nano dollars?

1 Nanodollar == $0.0000000001

$0.0000000003 * 54000000000 == $16.20 an hour

--- edit ---

It was brought to my attention by James Bondo that I typed one too many zeros in the above. Just amending this in case someone encounters that misleading math before his correcting me. It is actually:

1 Nanodollar == $0.000000001

$0.000000003 * 54000000000 == $162.00 an hour

 

[RockSpider]

A witty response, next time someone says Apple has 100's of gigadollars in bank this is a rounding error for them.

Apple makes gigadollars and gives back nano dollars in return is what I think you're trying to say.

 

[D.T.]

What the heck are nano dollars?

Basically, they reverse calculated the cost of a single write operation, based on a large DB cluster costing X amount and being able to handle Y amount of ops.

I saw another article citing 3.6million writes per penny, based on a 480 core AWS instance.

The software can scale up to some point, to achieve maximum performance, then what is the cost of that scale in terms of infrastructure.

Really dig on noSQL, I've been using Mongo and Couch for a couple of years now, and for some parts of the architecture, it's simply fantastic.

 

[NissanGuy23]

1 nano dollar = 100 nano cents

100 nano cents = 5 Stanley nickels

 

[Tubamajuba]

Apple makes gigadollars and gives back nano dollars in return is what I think you're trying to say.

Could you bend over backwards any further?

 

[SockRolid]

Dear former customers of Rock-Solid…
Your trust in our Rock-Solid products is no longer rock-solid, literally.
Sorry to shatter your plans, but we ceased operations.
We have been assimilated.

Because SockRolid is better.

 

[prasand]

Really dig on noSQL, I've been using Mongo and Couch for a couple of years now

Mongo is great, and would've been nice to see Apple throw their hat in with them. But I understand their need for fully Atomic operations. *sighs*

 

[demodave]

https://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/24/apple-acquires-foundationdb/

Apple has acquired database company FoundationDB, reports TechCrunch. FoundationDB is a company that "develops scalable and fault tolerant databases that support multiple data models." A notice on the company's site says that it has ceased to offer downloads after deciding to "evolve [the] company mission."

Article Link: Apple Acquires 'Rock-Solid High-Performance' Database Company FoundationDB

Anyone have any thought on why this is interesting?

 

[Mashurrab]

Why dismissing the fact that this DB can be used in IOS devices. This should make these devices faster and able to process lots of data on there much bigger available capacities and smaller CPUs.

 

[demodave]

Because SockRolid is better.

You've been waiting for that moment, right?