Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Hekate – A Zero-Copy ZK Engine Overcoming the Memory Wall

Most ZK proving systems are optimized for server-grade hardware with massive RAM. When scaling to industrial-sized traces (2^20+ rows), they often hit a "Memory Wall" where allocation and data movement become a larger bottleneck than the actual computation. I have been developing Hekate, a ZK engine written in Rust that utilizes a Zero-Copy streaming model and a hybrid tiled evaluator. To test its limits, I ran a head-to-head benchmark against Binius64 on an Apple M3 Max laptop using Keccak-256. The results highlight a significant architectural divergence: At 2^15 rows: Binius64 is faster…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1
Open-source engine running Gemma 4 26B in 2 GB RAM on any M-series Mac▲919
Hi HN, I built a specialized inference engine for running 4-bit Gemma 4 26B-A4B-IT on any M-series Mac using about 2 GB of RAM. It is called TurboFieldfare and is written in Swift and Metal. I have always adored on-device AI. It feels like magic that you can run a powerful NN on your Mac or iPhone. So I wanted to push the limits a bit and run a model whose weights don’t fit in memory. The model’s 4-bit quantized weights occupy roughly 14 GB, which makes running it with conventional inference tools almost impossible on an 8 GB or even 16 GB Mac once the OS, applications, and KV cache are…
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
2
Sameshi – a ~1200 Elo chess engine that fits within 2KB▲230
I made a chess engine today, and made it fit within 2KB. I used a variant of MinMax called Negamax, with alpha beta pruning. For the board representation I have used a 120-cell "mailbox". I managed to squeeze in checkmate/stalemate in there, after trimming out some edge cases. I am a great fan of demoscene (computer art subculture) since middle school, and hence it was a ritual i had to perform. For estimating the Elo, I measured 240 automated games against Stockfish Elo levels (1320 to 1600) under fixed depth-5 and some constrained rules, using equal color distribution. Then converted…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
3
We made our own inference engine for Apple Silicon▲186
We wrote our inference engine on Rust, it is faster than llama cpp in all of the use cases. Your feedback is very welcomed. Written from scratch with idea that you can add support of any kernel and platform.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
4
A “living” Linux process with no memory▲312
A "living" Linux process with no memory. Contribute to izabera/zeromaps development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
5
Nova JavaScript Engine▲271
We're building a different kind of JavaScript engine, based on data-oriented design and willingness to try something quite out of left field. This is most concretely visible in our major architectural choices: 1. All data allocated on the JavaScript heap is placed into a type-specific vector. Numbers go into the numbers vector, strings into the strings vector, and so on. 2. All heap references are type-discriminated indexes: A heap number is identified by its discriminant value and the index to which it points to in the numbers vector. 3. Objects are also split up into object kind -specific…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
6AS
Accelerating SHA256 by 100x in Golang on ARM▲156
2016 · blog.minio.io · its alternatives →
7GC
Goldbach Conjecture up to 4*10^18+7*10^13▲244
Achieved a new world record in verifying the Goldbach Conjecture using grid computing, by extending the verification up to 4 quadrillion (4×10¹⁸) + 70 trillion (7×10¹³). My grid computing system - Gridbach is a cloud-based distributed computing system accessible from any PC or smartphone. It requires no login or app installation. The high-performance WASM (WebAssembly) binary code is downloaded as browser content, enabling computation on the user’s browser. [Website] https://gridbach.com/ [Medium]…
2025 · medium.com · its alternatives →
8
zkGolf – Competitive optimization of formally verified circuits▲69
Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) let an untrusted proved show that computation was executed correctly without revealing the inputs to the verifier. However to prove anything, the computation first has to be expressed as a circuit: a system of polynomial equations (constraints) over a finite field. Circuits are the assembly language of zk and every constraint costs prover (and sometimes verifier) time, so production circuits are aggressively hand-optimized. Over the last months, we have been experimenting with writing formal specifications instead and letting LLMs produce the circuits: as long as…
Jul 2026 · zk.golf · its alternatives →
9
Forkrun – NUMA-aware shell parallelizer (50×–400× faster than parallel)▲151
forkrun is the culmination of a 10-year-long journey focused on "how to make shell parallelization fast". What started as a standard "fork jobs in a loop" has turned into a lock-free, CAS-retry-loop-free, SIMD-accelerated, self-tuning, NUMA aware shell-based stream parallelization engine that is (mostly) a drop-in replacement for xargs -P and GNU parallel. On my 14-core/28-thread i9-7940x, forkrun achieves: * 200,000+ batch dispatches/sec (vs ~500 for GNU Parallel) * ~95–99% CPU utilization across all 28 logical cores, even when the workload is non-existant (bash no-ops / `:`)…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
10
A nibble-oriented CPU in Verilog to build a scientific calculator▲119
The core question: how did HP's scientific calculators actually work at the gate level? That rabbit hole led to building one from scratch. The architectural decision everything else follows from: a decimal calculator should store numbers as BCD — one decimal digit per 4-bit nibble. A standard byte-oriented CPU (Z80, 6502) fights that layout constantly. So I designed a small custom CPU in Verilog where 4 bits is the natural data width and memory is nibble addressable. What the project covers: - Custom CPU: Harvard architecture, 12-bit ISA, 8-state execution FSM, hardware stack guard with a…
May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
11
Vekos – a Rust OS with Built-In Cryptographic Verification▲82
VEKOS(Verified Experimental Kernel OS) is a Rust-based experimental kernel that focuses on runtime verification and security. Every filesystem operation and memory allocation generates cryptographic proofs that can be verified in real-time, ensuring system integrity. Think of it like a blockchain for OS operations rather than just storage verification. Key features: - Merkle tree-backed filesystem with operation verification - Memory manager with CoW and proof generation - Buddy allocator with zone-based memory management - Shell with VT100 support - Verified boot sequence with stage…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
12OA
Obelisk – a WASM-based deterministic workflow engine▲103
A lightweight engine for durable execution / deterministic workflows I built with Rust, wasmtime and the WASM Component Model. Its main use is running reliable, long-running workflows that can automatically resume after failures. Looking for feedback on the approach and potential use cases!
2025 · obeli.sk · its alternatives →
13
KiviDB, a faster Redis-compatible memory database and vector cache▲69
A fast, multi-threaded Redis® and Valkey alternative written in Rust: drop-in compatible, with full-text and vector search built in - kividbio/kividb
4d ago · github.com · its alternatives →
14
Accelerate SHA256 Computations in Go Using AVX512 instructions▲74
Accelerate SHA256 computations in pure Go using AVX512, SHA Extensions for x86 and ARM64 for ARM. On AVX512 it provides an up to 8x improvement (over 3 GB/s per core). SHA Extensions give a performance boost of close to 4x over native. - minio/sha256-simd
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
15
Flippy Bit And The Attack Of The Hexadecimals▲78
Bitwise operations and conversions to hexadecimals
2016 · flippybitandtheattackofthehexadecimalsfrombase16.com · its alternatives →
16AT
A tiny LLM running at 21,000 tok/s on a $250 FPGA (Live Demo)▲79
A 3.16M-parameter INT4 transformer running entirely in the on-chip memory of a Xilinx Kria KV260. Zero DRAM in the token loop, 59,965 tok/s on the fabric, bit-exact. Chat with it live.
Aug 2026 · mikeayles.com · its alternatives →
17
Salt – a systems language with Z3 theorem proving in the compiler▲44
Hey HN, I wanted to share the new online playground for Salt (https://salt-lang.dev/playground/), a sovereign systems language designed for high-performance, distributed workloads where paying an "abstraction tax" is no longer acceptable. We started building Salt to bridge the gap between the raw power of manual pointer arithmetic and the safety guarantees of modern high-level languages. The architecture relies on an MLIR-based backbone and a Z3-powered "formal shadow," and the design is rooted in three main pillars: Fast Enough: The target is to stay within 20% of C's…
Jul 2026 · salt-lang.dev · its alternatives →
18
I made a zero-copy coroutine tracer to find my scheduler's lost wakeups▲49
A cross-language, zero-copy coroutine observability framework based on the cTP shared-memory protocol, utilizing lock-free ring buffers for ultra-low overhead state tracing. - lixiasky-back/coroTracer
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
19
I Built a Groth16 ZK-Proof Verifier from Scratch Using Rust▲6
I've always been fascinated by cryptographic principles, so I decided to dive deep into zero-knowledge proofs and implement a Groth16 proof verifier entirely in Rust. This project validates cryptographic proofs and demonstrates how succinct, verifiable computations can be achieved. Using Rust's powerful libraries like arkworks, I implemented pairing checks, public input commitments, and proof validation logic while ensuring the code remains modular and efficient. I handled the complexities of affine group operations, scalar multiplications, and optimized public input verification to make…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
20
Neptune.io, A self-healing platform to fix server alerts automatically▲66
Neptune is a quantum-safe layer 1 blockchain combining zk-STARKs and PoW consensus. Private by default, programmable, and built for global scale
2014 · neptune.io · its alternatives →
21
ZXC – Asymmetric, +40% decode vs. LZ4 on ARM (C, BSD-3, Fuzzed)▲28
Hello HN, author here. I built ZXC, a lossless compression library designed specifically for "Write Once, Read Many" scenarios (Game assets, Firmware, App bundles). The Concept: Standard real-time codecs (LZ4, Snappy) are designed for symmetry. ZXC explores an asymmetric approach: it spends significantly more CPU cycles at compression time to generate a bitstream specifically structured for modern, wide-issue execution pipelines (maximizing Instruction Level Parallelism). Performance (Verified via lzbench integration): ZXC was merged into the official lzbench repository monday. ARM64 (Apple…
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
22
Run Full Kimi K3 with 29 GB of RAM▲9
Run the full 2.78-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 model or GLM-5.3-Flash beyond available RAM by streaming activated weights directly from NVMe. A dependency-free, embeddable C inference engine. - sqliteai/warp
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
23
I shrank DeepSeek V4 Flash to 57GB and it wrote a compiler on my Mac▲21
I built a specialized package of DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (originally 284B total parameters, 13B active), preserving reasoning, tool calling and coding capabilities: https://huggingface.co/steadfastgaze/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731-... I let it write a minimal C compiler targeting ARM64, then test the result with Fibonacci and FizzBuzz programs, and it succeeded in less than 1 hour, with the full recording at: https://youtu.be/XiwSilmV8B0 You can run it on Silicon Macs with my engine https://github.com/steadfastgaze/MoEspresso, while one of the…
Aug 2026 · huggingface.co · its alternatives →
24
S3 compatible store with 1M IOPS(4K-R,p99~5ms), BYOC in 5min with rust▲23
Ultra-high performance distributed storage system in the AI era. Powered by Fractal ART engine, Rust-native, io_uring, with multi-protocol (S3 object storage, POSIX FS, ...) - fractalbits-labs/fractalbits
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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