zExpander

While key-value (KV) cache, such as memcached, dedicates a large volume of expensive memory to holding performance-critical data, it is important to improve memory efficiency, or to reduce cache miss ratio without adding more memory. As we find that optimizing replacement algorithms is of limited effect for this purpose, a promising approach is to use a compact data organization and data compression to increase effective cache size. However, this approach has the risk of degrading the cache's performance due to additional computation cost. A common perception is that a high-performance KV cache is not compatible with use of data compacting techniques.