[Feature request] 32-bit Docker images

[binaryfire]

Hi all

I did some testing after reading the following in the docs and found a significant reduction in memory usage with 32-bit builds:

Using 32-bit instances
When Valkey is compiled as a 32-bit target, it uses a lot less memory per key, since pointers are small, but such an instance will be limited to 4 GB of maximum memory usage. To compile Valkey as 32-bit binary use make 32bit. RDB and AOF files are compatible between 32-bit and 64-bit instances (and between little and big endian of course) so you can switch from 32 to 64-bit, or the contrary, without problems.

Is there any chance official 32-bit versions could be added to Docker Hub? I realise I can build them myself but official images would make maintenance a lot easier. The use case is caching - the majority of web apps don't need anything close to 4GB and the reduced memory footprint is a big help in resource constrained environments.

[stockholmux]

I have mixed feelings about this, so I did some tests to find out the difference between 32-Bit Valkey vs 64-Bit Valkey.

Here is what I found:

• Building 32-bit Valkey on a modern distro is not easy. I tried it on Fedora 41 and I had to install a lot of random packages compared to 64-bit which just kinda works out-of-the-box.
• The difference is in memory efficiency big, but not huge. Here was test (feel free to tell me I did it wrong).
  • I filled each instance by running DEBUG POPULATE 2500 test 1000000 (2500 keys at ~1mb each)
  • I ran sudo pmap -x <pid>
  • Ran this on x86_64 Fedora 41 each on 32-bit Valkey and as a 64-bit Valkey with a standard valkey.conf, only modified with enable-debug-command local to enable running the debug command.

Total memory used
32-bit: 2634404kb (2.64gb)
64-bit: 3020524kb (3.02gb)

So, ~14.4% more memory efficient. On the surface, yeah, that extra 14.4% would be helpful for resource constrained situations. I haven't done a benchmark, my guess is they'd be pretty comparable, although I'd love to see something on a benchmark.

What I'm a little more concerned about is what the project would need to maintain by issuing a 32-bit container. I'm not sure how much 32-bit Valkey is tested and the long-term outlook for 32-bit stuff is... grim. We're far beyond the days when 32-bit is needed to support any plausible, contemporary hardware.

64-bit is a far less constrained environment for a memory hungry application like Valkey; I feel like 32-bit containers would be used only by a handful of people and they are a non-trivial thing to maintain.

[binaryfire]

All fair points. The use case it would really shine for is IoT devices but yeah, I’m not sure the extra maintenance headaches are worth it.