v0.0.1 - Pre-alpha

Alright, this is the real deal, I finally have some decent results to show for the work over the last 8 months. it's finally ready to play with i think

NornicDB vs CopperDB — Northwind Benchmark Comparison

• Products seeded: 48,000, Orders seeded: 48,000
• Iterations per query: 10 (after 2 warmup iterations)

Summary

Metric	NornicDB	CopperDB	Delta	Ratio
Overall mean latency (ms)	0.16	0.16	+3.1%	0.97×
Overall throughput (ops/sec)	12.11	13.06	-7.3%	0.93×
Seed duration (ms)	9,388.75	9,356.18	+0.3%	1.00×
Avg CPU power (mW)	8,698.10	7,503.13	+15.9%	0.86×
Avg GPU power (mW)	61.28	27.48	+123.0%	0.45×
Avg package power (mW)	8,759.36	7,530.61	+16.3%	0.86×
Energy during benchmark (J)	150.29	182.42	-17.6%	1.21×
Benchmark wall-clock (s)	18.78	26.00	-27.8%	1.38×
Peak memory used (bytes)	20.6 GiB	20.5 GiB	+0.3%	1.00×
Raw data files (bytes)	152,002,560	163,586,048	-7.1%	1.08×

Delta = (NornicDB − CopperDB) / CopperDB. Ratio compares CopperDB to NornicDB for metrics where lower is better (latency, energy, disk), and NornicDB to CopperDB for throughput (higher is better).

Per-Query Latency

Query	NornicDB mean (ms)	CopperDB mean (ms)	Delta	NornicDB P95	CopperDB P95	NornicDB ops/s	CopperDB ops/s
products_per_category	0.18	0.19	-8.0%	0.18	0.20	4,927.73	4,592.25
customer_category_distinct_orders	0.14	0.13	+8.4%	0.17	0.15	6,918.02	7,482.23
optional_match_orders_count	0.19	0.18	+3.9%	0.20	0.19	4,683.48	4,855.74
revenue_by_product	0.14	0.12	+13.1%	0.15	0.19	6,901.71	7,725.49

Correctness

Seed verification. Post-seed counts reported by each database (via MATCH (n:Label) RETURN count(n) and equivalent edge queries).

Entity	NornicDB	CopperDB	Match
Category	96	96	✅
Supplier	144	144	✅
Customer	1,200	1,200	✅
Product	48,000	48,000	✅
Order	48,000	48,000	✅
PART_OF	48,000	48,000	✅
SUPPLIES	48,000	48,000	✅
PURCHASED	48,000	48,000	✅
ORDERS	168,050	168,050	✅

Per-query result fingerprints. Each engine runs the query on the first (warmup) iteration, canonicalises the full result set, and hashes it with SHA-256. A matching row_count + matching hash means the engines returned the same data.

Query	NornicDB rows	CopperDB rows	NornicDB hash	CopperDB hash	Match
products_per_category	96	96	91e9f1f06368…	91e9f1f06368…	✅
customer_category_distinct_orders	10	10	5da36214d516…	5da36214d516…	✅
optional_match_orders_count	100	100	8950fcdaab16…	8950fcdaab16…	✅
revenue_by_product	10	10	60b64c678f4c…	60b64c678f4c…	✅

Intra-run stability. Every iteration of each query re-fingerprints its result set; a mismatch within a single engine's run is flagged below.

• No intra-run mismatches on either engine.

✅ All correctness checks passed — both engines seeded identically and returned identical result sets (by row count and canonical SHA-256 fingerprint) for every benchmark query.

Storage

Raw data files only (preallocated scratch, WAL, and indexes excluded from the headline):

Bucket	NornicDB	CopperDB
Raw data	145.0 MiB (152,002,560 B)	156.0 MiB (163,586,048 B)
Indexes / stats	0 B (0 B)	4.0 KiB (4,096 B)
Write-ahead logs	260.0 KiB (266,240 B)	26.7 MiB (28,020,736 B)
Metadata	8.0 KiB (8,192 B)	0 B (0 B)
Scratch (excluded)	1.0 MiB (1,048,576 B)	4.0 KiB (4,096 B)
Unclassified	0 B (0 B)	0 B (0 B)
Total du	146.2 MiB	182.7 MiB

• Raw data ratio: 0.93× CopperDB (smaller)
• Full-dir ratio (includes scratch/WAL): 0.80× CopperDB

Power

	NornicDB	CopperDB
Samples	17	24
Duration (s)	17.16	24.22
CPU avg (mW)	8,698.1	7,503.1
GPU avg (mW)	61.3	27.5
Package avg (mW)	8,759.4	7,530.6
Energy (J)	150.29	182.42

Memory Pressure

System-wide memory during each engine's full lifecycle (startup → benchmark → shutdown).

	NornicDB	CopperDB
Samples	19	26
Avg used (active+wired+compressor)	20.3 GiB	20.2 GiB
Peak used	20.6 GiB	20.5 GiB
Avg free	467.0 MiB	570.6 MiB
Min free	56.6 MiB	56.3 MiB
Avg compressed (logical)	21.5 GiB	21.5 GiB
Peak compressed	21.5 GiB	21.5 GiB

Notes

• Power figures are Apple powermetrics estimates; treat as directional, not absolute. Apple's own docs note that reported averages are approximate.
• Both databases were freshly initialized before each run; CopperDB was stopped during the NornicDB run, and vice versa, to isolate measurements.
• Benchmarks ran over the Bolt protocol using the neo4j-go-driver.
• Storage classification: NornicDB raw data = *.sst + *.vlog (LSM records + value log). CopperDB raw data = Fjall keyspace tables and manifests. Preallocated scratch files — Badger's 8 MiB memtable (*.mem) and 1 MiB discard log (DISCARD), and CopperDB lock/version metadata — are excluded because their size is fixed/preallocated and does not scale with the dataset.