Yandex open-sources YaFF (reduces CPU usage by up to 20%)

Η Yandex has decided to open source YaFF (YaFF is an abbreviation for Yet Another Flat Format). YaFF is an open source C++ serialization library developed by Yandex. It is designed to eliminate the cost of deserialization in data-intensive applications, reducing CPU usage by up to 20%.

The company says that YaFF was designed to solve a common problem with Protobuf, the widely used data serialization technology. While Protobuf is efficient for transmitting data, applications typically need to deserialize that data before they can use it. According to Yandex, this process can consume up to 10% of available CPU resources on large systems.

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YaFF takes a different approach. Instead of forcing applications to deserialize data before accessing it, the technology allows for direct access while remaining compatible with existing Protobuf schemas and workflows. In other words, developers may be able to achieve performance improvements without having to rewrite applications or use a completely different format.

This compatibility is the project's biggest advantage. Technologies like FlatBuffers already exist to address similar challenges, but migrating to a new format can be expensive and time-consuming. Yandex says that YaFF works alongside the existing Protobuf infrastructure, making adoption much easier.

The company claims that YaFF is already being used in its advertising platform, which processes hundreds of thousands of requests per second. In this environment, Yandex says the technology has reduced CPU usage by 10 to 20 percent.

Of course, these numbers should be treated with some caution until independent developers have had time to evaluate the technology in their own environments. However, the idea is intriguing. If YaFF can deliver significant performance gains without requiring major architectural changes, it could find traction among developers working on high-load backend systems.

Yandex released YaFF under the Apache 2.0 license and has the source code available on GitHub.

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