Database Sharding at Netlog, with MySQL & PHP
http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/overview.html
MSDN Magazine: Concurrency & Coordination Runtime
SQL Server Search Engine: Do multi-core perform better than single-core cpus
http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/01/sharding-for-startups.html
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2008/jw-10-load-balancing-1.html
EnyimMemcached: uses minimal locking to increase throughtput/ consistent hashing for keys/ primitive types store optimized.
BeITMemcached: support many commands/ high performance/ compression/ detecting of dead servers/ implementation memcached protocol specifications strictly.