Memcached 1.6 Released with enhanced meta protocol

March 8, the development team of Memcached, a distributed memory object caching system, released ‘Memcached 1.6’. External flash storage will be compiled by default, and the meta protocol has been enhanced.

Memcached is a distributed cache storage system. By reducing the database load, it can speed up dynamic web applications. The project is supported by businesses like Netflix and Packet.

The latest stable release Memchached 1.6 is the successor of Memcached 1.5, which was released in 2017. The ‘extstore’ feature, by which Memched uses not only memory (RAM) but also flash storage for memory space, is compiled by default. It still requires careful attention in a large production, but it is reported to be generally stable.

There are more features in meta protocol than in binary protocol, and that led to the deprecation of the binary protocol. Everything that can be done with text/binary protocol can be done with the new meta commands. Also, using mega commands can bring better performance and correctness of cache systems.

As the network code has been refactored, the automatic batching of response syscalls is now possible. This improves CPU efficiency and mitigate latency.

This release includes many more small feature improvements and bug fixes.

Memcached
https://www.memcached.org/