Microsoft Developer Ported Vector Database Coded In SAPs ABAP To The ZX Spectrum

A Microsoft senior software engineer named Alice Vinogradova has ported a database she wrote in SAP’s ABAP language to the venerable Z80 processor that powered the Sinclair ZX Spectrum – and marveled at the results.

Vinogradova’s named her database ZVDB-Z80 and describes it as “a Vector Database developed entirely in ABAP, designed to offer an independent solution without relying on external vector databases.”

ABAP (born 1983) and Z80 (born 1976) are practically contemporaries

ABAP, aka Advanced Business Application Programming, is the programming language ERP behemoth SAP created to write apps for its platform.

Naturally, the code is on GitHub, where the engineer explained that “Last month, I was cleaning up old code and rediscovered ZVDB.”

When Vinogradova reconsidered ZVDB, she “had a realization that made me smile.”

“ABAP (born 1983) and Z80 (born 1976) are practically contemporaries,” she wrote. “They grew up in the same era of computing—when memory was precious, cycles were counted, and every byte mattered.”

Vinogradova appreciates the tricks developers needed to use to create good software despite those constraints.

“When I built ZVDB, I deliberately applied every Z80 optimization I knew,” she wrote. “Why? Because these ‘old’ techniques are timeless – they just happen to make modern code blazingly fast.”

So she used them again while re-writing ZVDB in Z80 assembly language, and claims that when running on the vintage CPU her code ran “Only 3-6x slower despite 857x clock speed difference.”

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Vinogradova doesn’t think that’s a massive surprise. “These optimizations were born for the Z80. They just happen to be universally optimal,” she wrote, before explaining why she feels Z80 thinking “Still wins in 2025”.

Every Z80 lesson I applied to ABAP remains valid on modern hardware:

1. Lookup tables are always faster than calculation
   • Z80: Save those precious cycles
   • Modern CPU: Cache-friendly access patterns
2. Sequential memory access is king
   • Z80: One cycle vs four for random access
   • HANA: Columnar storage loves sequential patterns
3. Bit operations are universal
   • Z80: Native CPU instructions
   • Modern CPU: SIMD does the same thing, faster
4. Pre-computation beats runtime math
   • Z80: Can't afford to calculate
   • Modern systems: Why calculate what you can remember?

“Those years with Z80 assembly weren't just nostalgia—they were training,” she added. “Every cycle counted then, and guess what? Every cycle still counts now. The scale changed. The principles didn't.”

“When I port this to HANA AMDP, it'll be even faster. Because AMDP will take my Z80-optimized algorithm and parallelize it. But the core insight—lookup beats calculation, sequential beats random—that came from 1976.”

Her GitHub page of course includes the code discussed here, plus instructions on how to get it running on an actual Sinclair ZX Spectrum, online emulators JSSpeccy or Qaop/JS, or on local emulators Fuse , ZEsarUX, Speccy, or Retro Virtual Machine.®