BLBluestein·Aug 17, 2026Submission
Smallpond: A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FS
2 points · Open discussiondeepseek-ai
smallpond
Python2025–2026
deepseek-ai / smallpond
smallpond
A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FS.
14Distinct people
14Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
5KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FS.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- deepseek-ai/3fs · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month14 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2025-02-28 01:56:35 UTC to 2026-08-17 17:37:26 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2025 | 2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Mar 2025 | 2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| Apr 2025 | 2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2025 | 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2025 | 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2025 | 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2025 | 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2025 | 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2025 | 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Nov 2025 | 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2025 | 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2026 | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Feb 2026 | 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2026 | 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2026 | 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2026 | 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2026 | 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2026 | 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2026 | 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
14 sourcesDuckDB out of the box may not be great. But you have DuckLake, Quack, and even DeepSeek made their own distributed DB based on DuckDB: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond
In A Preview of DuckDB v2.0Which, unfortunately, is not maintained: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond
In Quack-Cluster: A Serverless Distributed SQL Query Engine with DuckDB and RayHi mosselman, GizmoEdge is not open-source. DeepSeek has "smallpond" however, which is open-source: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond
I plan on getting GizmoEdge to production-grade quality eventually so folks can use it as a service or licensed software. There is a lot of work to do, though :)
In A sharded DuckDB on 63 nodes runs 1T row aggregation challenge in 5 secDeepSeek released smallpond
0 - https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond
1 - https://www.definite.app/blog/smallpond (overview for data engineers, practical application)
In A sharded DuckDB on 63 nodes runs 1T row aggregation challenge in 5 secDeepseek is the real "open<something>" that the world needed. Via these three projects, Deepseek has addressed not only efficient AI but also distributed computing:
1. smallpond: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond
2. 3fs: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/3FS
3. deepep: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepEP
In DeepSeek's smallpond: Bringing Distributed Computing to DuckDBThe function argument defaults to polars, but the actual benchmark code sets duckdb by default.
https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond/blob/ed112db42af4d0...
In Smallpond – A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FSOne thing I found peculiar is that for the GraySort benchmark it dispatches to Polars by default to do the actual sorting, not DuckDB: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond/blob/ed112db42af4d0....
In Smallpond – A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FSsmallpond: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond :
> A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FS.
In DeepSeek releases distributed DuckDBSmallpond. Runs on their RDMA powered 3fs ("fire-flyer file system") filesystem.
https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200793
I didn't find anything of value in this article.
Did enjoy https://mehdio.substack.com/p/duckdb-goes-distributed-deepse... some, which eventually talks about smallpond being built on Ray, and… Smallpond actually running multiple partitioned duckdb instances?! Wow.
In Understanding Smallpond and 3FSSmallpond: A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FS
3 points · Open discussionThey appear to have Python bindings which seems reasonable from an API / usability perspective? https://github.com/deepseek-ai/smallpond
In terms of fast FUSE - also my first question, appears to be`io_uring` + FUSE :)
https://github.com/deepseek-ai/3FS/blob/main/src/lib/api/Usr...
In Fire-Flyer File System from DeepSeekSmallpond – A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FS
323 points · Open discussion