turbopuffer: Object Storage-native Database for Search (Simon Eskildsen)
- Speaker:
- Simon Eskildsen
- Date:
- Mon Mar 9, 2026 @ 04:30pm EDT
- Date:
- Mon Mar 9, 2026
- Time:
- 04:30pm EDT
- Location:
- https://cmu.zoom.us/j/99830697483?pwd=RLKiHNDLPvOyoCMHSBGmWfbba4ZAb4.1Zoom
- Title:
- turbopuffer: Object Storage-native Database for Search
- System:
- turbopuffer
Talk Info:
turbopuffer is an object storage-native search engine. It puffs data into a tiered NVMe SSD and RAM cache to achieve sub-10ms warm query latency. The storage engine minimizes roundtrips to object storage to limit cold latency and maximize concurrent IOPS. It even drives consensus with object storage through conditional writes.
To build a successful, independent database you need three conditions:
- A new workload that compels every company on earth to put that workload in your database, either directly or indirectly
- A new storage architecture, enabled by recent technological advances, that uniquely serves that new workload
- The ambition to service every query plan in the limit
In this talk, I'll make turbopuffer's case for existence, and argue that Postgres can't save you this time.
This talk is part of the PostgreSQL vs. The World Seminar Series.
Bio:
Simon Eskildsen is the co-founder and CEO at turbopuffer. Formerly Principal Engineer at Shopify, where he helped scale infra from 1K → 1M RPS.