Ok, but Does It Scale?
Summary
The article explores horizontal versus vertical scalability in databases, outlining compute, storage, and networking as the three core dimensions. It argues that horizontal scaling isn’t universally achievable due to contention and coordination overhead, and describes Spacetime's approach—single-threaded actors, tiered storage, asynchronous inter-database communication, and distributed/intra-database transactions—to scale OLTP workloads efficiently. It also highlights a roadmap with October 31, 2026 milestones for scalability features and deployment models.