Distributions

Spice.ai Enterprise runtime distributions for different workload requirements.

Spice.ai Enterprise provides multiple runtime distributions optimized for different workloads. All distributions are available in Enterprise; some are restricted or nightly-only in open source.

The Spice runtime is 64-bit only.

Supported Platforms

Platform	Architecture	Minimum CPU Features
Linux	x86_64	AVX2, FMA, BMI1/2, LZCNT, POPCNT
Linux	aarch64 (arm64)	NEON, FP16 (FEAT_FP16), FHM (FEAT_FHM)
macOS	aarch64 (Apple Silicon)	Native

Distribution Availability

Distribution	Open Source	Spice Cloud	Enterprise
Default (Data + AI)	✅	✅	✅
Data-only	Nightly only	✅	✅
NAS (SMB + NFS)	Nightly only	—	✅
Metal (macOS)	✅	✅	✅
CUDA (Linux)	Nightly only	✅	✅
Allocator variants	Nightly only	✅	✅
ODBC connector	Local build only	✅	✅

Default Distribution

Includes all standard data connectors, embedded data accelerators (Spice Cayenne, DuckDB, SQLite), AI/ML model inference (LLMs, embeddings), search capabilities (vector and BM-25 full-text search), and the default memory allocator (snmalloc).

Data-Only Distribution

Excludes AI/ML model support. Provides a smaller binary size and reduced attack surface for workloads that only need data federation and acceleration.

NAS Distribution

Adds SMB and NFS data connector support. Enterprise-only for production use.

GPU-Accelerated Distributions

Metal (macOS)

GPU-accelerated AI/ML inference on Apple Silicon.

CUDA (Linux)

CUDA GPU-accelerated model inference. Supported compute capabilities:

Compute Capability	GPUs
80	A100, A30
86	RTX 30xx, A40, A10
87	Jetson Orin
89	RTX 40xx, L40, L4
90	H100, H200

Enterprise CUDA images are available from the AWS Marketplace ECR registry (see AWS Marketplace for subscription and authentication):

docker pull 709825985650.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/spice-ai/spiceai-enterprise-byol:latest-cuda

Allocator Variants

Different memory allocators can significantly impact performance depending on workload characteristics. Enterprise provides production-ready allocator variant images.

snmalloc (Default)

The default allocator, optimized for concurrent workloads. Reduces memory usage 10-20% compared to jemalloc/mimalloc.

jemalloc

Alternative allocator that may perform better for certain memory allocation patterns.

docker pull 709825985650.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/spice-ai/spiceai-enterprise-byol:latest-jemalloc

mimalloc

Microsoft's mimalloc allocator, designed for performance and security.

docker pull 709825985650.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/spice-ai/spiceai-enterprise-byol:latest-mimalloc

System Allocator

Uses the system's default allocator (glibc malloc on Linux).

docker pull 709825985650.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/spice-ai/spiceai-enterprise-byol:latest-sysalloc

Choosing a Distribution

Use Case	Recommended Distribution
General purpose with AI capabilities	Default
Data federation only, minimal footprint	Data-only
Network attached storage (SMB/NFS)	NAS
macOS with GPU acceleration	Metal
Linux with NVIDIA GPU	CUDA
Memory allocation tuning	Allocator variants