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Brytlyt

discontinued

by Brytlyt Ltd. (now part of Opensignal) · since 2016 · also known as BrytlytDB

GPU-accelerated analytics database built on PostgreSQL; technology acquired by Opensignal in 2024.

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discontinued. Acquired by Opensignal in June 2024 and folded into its ONX analytics suite; no longer sold as a standalone database.

Overview

Brytlyt was a GPU database from a UK startup that grafted GPU-parallel filtering, sorting, aggregation and joins onto a PostgreSQL 9.x code base, so analysts kept standard Postgres SQL, drivers and tools while heavy queries ran across NVIDIA GPUs in a scale-out MPP layout. It was pitched for interactive analytics and visualization over billion-row tables, and its patented GPU join method was the core of the product. In June 2024 Opensignal acquired the platform and its engineering team and built it into its own network-analytics suite, so Brytlyt is no longer sold as a standalone database and its old domains no longer serve product pages. For GPU SQL analytics today look at HEAVY.AI or Kinetica, or use a CPU columnar engine such as ClickHouse or DuckDB.

Analytics (OLAP)Real-time analytics

Strengths & trade-offs

Strengths

  • +GPU-parallel joins, filters and aggregations over billion-row tables
  • +Kept PostgreSQL's SQL dialect, MVCC, drivers and tooling
  • +Scale-out MPP design distributed work across many GPUs

Trade-offs

  • −No longer available as a product after the 2024 Opensignal acquisition
  • −Built on an old PostgreSQL 9.x fork
  • −Needed NVIDIA GPUs and hot data in host or GPU memory to pay off

Great for

  • +Historical reference for GPU-accelerated PostgreSQL forks
  • +Studying GPU join and partitioning strategies

Think twice for

  • −Any new deployment: the product is no longer sold
  • −OLTP workloads

Capabilities

Native or official first-party support · 7 of 25 tracked

✓Transactions
✓Joins
✓Secondary indexes
✓Triggers
✓Stored procedures
✓Durable persistence
✓Role-based access
–Full-text search
–Vector search
–Geospatial
–JSON
–Change data capture
–Materialized views
–TTL / expiry
–Pub/Sub
–Columnar storage
–In-memory
–Compression
–Encryption at rest
–Time travel
–Branching
–Online schema changes
–Streaming ingest
–Offline sync
–Runs in WebAssembly

Scale & consistency

Comfortable data size
Medium · ≤ 10 TB
Horizontal scaling
Native
Multi-region
No
Transactions
Full ACID
Consistency
Strong
Schema
Strict
Architecture
Distributed, Client server
Query languages
SQL, PL/pgSQL

MPP design spread data blocks across many GPUs and nodes; no longer offered.

Deployment

Self-hosted Vendor-managed cloud Serverless Embedded Edge Kubernetes operator

Ecosystem

compatible withPostgreSQL
apis & protocolsPostgreSQL wire protocol
client languagesC, Java, Python

Alternatives to Brytlyt

Compare all→
HEAVY.AI (HeavyDB)Columnar / OLAP14.3

GPU-native columnar SQL database with visual analytics, fully open-sourced by NVIDIA in 2026.

brytlyt vs heavydb →
KineticaColumnar / OLAP6.4

GPU- and vector-accelerated database for real-time spatial, time-series and vector analytics.

brytlyt vs kinetica →
ClickHouseColumnar / OLAP69.8

Open-source columnar OLAP database known for very fast aggregations over billions of rows.

brytlyt vs clickhouse →
DuckDBColumnar / OLAP63.7

In-process columnar SQL database: the SQLite of analytics, running inside your app or notebook.

brytlyt vs duckdb →
SingleStoreRelational29.0

Distributed SQL mixing in-memory rowstore and columnstore for real-time analytics, search and vectors.

brytlyt vs singlestore →
InMemory.NetColumnar / OLAP0.2

Commercial in-memory columnar SQL engine for .NET that speeds up reporting over hundreds of millions of rows.

brytlyt vs inmemory-net →

Brytlyt FAQ

What is Brytlyt?

Brytlyt is a relational database by Brytlyt Ltd. (now part of Opensignal), first released in 2016. Brytlyt was a GPU database from a UK startup that grafted GPU-parallel filtering, sorting, aggregation and joins onto a PostgreSQL 9.x code base, so analysts kept standard Postgres SQL, drivers and tools while heavy queries ran across NVIDIA GPUs in a scale-out MPP layout. It was pitched for interactive analytics and visualization over billion-row tables, and its patented GPU join method was the core of the product. In June 2024 Opensignal acquired the platform and its engineering team and built it into its own network-analytics suite, so Brytlyt is no longer sold as a standalone database and its old domains no longer serve product pages. For GPU SQL analytics today look at HEAVY.AI or Kinetica, or use a CPU columnar engine such as ClickHouse or DuckDB.

Is Brytlyt open source?

No. Brytlyt is proprietary, closed-source software.

Does Brytlyt support ACID transactions?

Yes. Brytlyt supports full ACID transactions, with strong consistency.

Does Brytlyt scale horizontally?

Brytlyt scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at medium scale (≤ 10 TB).

What is Brytlyt best for?

Brytlyt is a strong fit for historical reference for GPU-accelerated PostgreSQL forks; and studying GPU join and partitioning strategies. Think twice for any new deployment: the product is no longer sold.

What are the best alternatives to Brytlyt?

Common alternatives to Brytlyt include HEAVY.AI (HeavyDB), Kinetica, ClickHouse, DuckDB and SingleStore. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.

Is Brytlyt still maintained?

Brytlyt is discontinued. Acquired by Opensignal in June 2024 and folded into its ONX analytics suite; no longer sold as a standalone database.

How popular is Brytlyt?

Brytlyt has little measurable public adoption today, so it ranks near the bottom of the WhichDB Score.