Index blocks for MyISAM tables are buffered and are shared by all threads. key_buffer_size is the size of the buffer used for index blocks. The key buffer is also known as the key cache. The maximum allowable setting for key_buffer_size is 4GB. The effective maximum size might be less, depending on your available physical RAM and per-process RAM limits imposed by your operating system or hardware platform. Increase the value to get better index handling (for all reads and multiple writes) to as much as you can afford. Using a value that is 25% of total memory on a machine that mainly runs MySQL is quite common. However, if you make the value too large (for example, more than 50% of your total memory) your system might start to page and become extremely slow. MySQL relies on the operating system to perform filesystem caching for data reads, so you must leave some room for the filesystem cache. Consider also the memory requirements of other storage engines.