Rust-based SQLite Rewrite Achieves 100x Tail Latency Reduction

Researchers from the University of Helsinki and Cambridge have rewritten SQLite in Rust, creating Limbo, a project leveraging asynchronous I/O and io_uring to drastically improve performance. By utilizing asynchronous I/O and storage disaggregation, Limbo achieves up to a 100x reduction in tail latency, particularly beneficial in multi-tenant serverless environments. The key improvement comes from replacing synchronous bytecode instructions with asynchronous counterparts, eliminating blocking and enhancing concurrency. While improvements are most pronounced at high percentiles, this makes Limbo ideal for applications demanding high reliability.