date: 2025-10-27 title: 'Spice v1.8.3 (Oct 27, 2025)' type: blog authors: [mach-kernel] tags: [release, duckdb, acceleration, sql, performance]
Announcing the release of Spice v1.8.3! ⚡
Spice v1.8.3 is a patch release focused on performance, reliability, and observability. This release delivers optimizations for DuckDB acceleration, parameterized queries, and query plans. A new opt-in dedicated thread pool for queries is now in preview.
connection_pool_size parameter, supporting fine-grained control over concurrent query execution. This enables tuning for high-concurrency workloads and improved resource utilization.Example Spicepod.yaml snippet:
on_refresh_recompute_statistics parameter, on by default, triggers automatic ANALYZE execution after refreshes. This keeps DuckDB optimizer statistics up-to-date, ensuring efficient query plans and optimal performance.Example Spicepod.yaml snippet:
Spice now supports automated SQL query plan capture and store (via EXPLAIN or EXPLAIN ANALYZE) in the task history, enabling deeper analysis and debugging of query execution. This feature is configurable, supporting control of which queries are included based on duration thresholds and plan type.
task_history.captured_plan: Controls which plan is captured (none, explain, or explain analyze). Default none.task_history.min_sql_duration: Minimum query duration before a plan is captured.task_history.min_plan_duration: Minimum plan execution duration before a plan is captured.Example spicepod.yaml snippet:
Query plans are captured asynchronously to avoid blocking query execution. The result of the plan is stored in the standard sql_query output in the task history.
Learn more in the Task History Documentation.
Optimized Prepared Statements (Parameterized Queries): Prepared statement caching for parameterized SQL queries has been improved, reducing planning overhead for repeated queries with different parameters. This results in faster execution and lower latency for workloads that reuse query structures.
Limit Pushdown via BytesProcessedExec: Introduces the BytesProcessedExec physical operator, enabling limit pushdown for large datasets. This optimization reduces the amount of data processed and improves top-k query performance.
Spice now supports running query execution and accelerated refreshes on a dedicated thread pool, separate from the HTTP server. This prevents heavy query workloads from slowing down API responses, keeping health and readiness checks fast. Opt-In for v1.8.3: This feature is opt-in for this release and will become enabled by default (opt-out) in v1.9.
Example Spicepod.yaml snippet:
Selective Evaluation Scorer Loading: Evaluation scorers are now loaded only when evaluation is explicitly defined, reducing unnecessary initialization and improving startup performance.
Improved Error Reporting: Enhanced error messages for misconfigured full-text search (FTS) on datasets and views, providing actionable feedback for configuration issues.
No breaking changes.
No major cookbook updates.
The Spice Cookbook includes 81 recipes to help you get started with Spice quickly and easily.
To upgrade to v1.8.3, use one of the following methods:
CLI:
Homebrew:
Docker:
Pull the spiceai/spiceai:1.8.3 image:
For available tags, see DockerHub.
Helm:
AWS Marketplace:
🎉 Spice is now available in the AWS Marketplace!
spill_compression to runtime config by @krinart in #7505min_sql_duration filter support by @lukekim in #7698