Patent attributes
Systems and methods are provided for implementing accelerated data access operations. For example, a method for accessing data includes loading an image into a memory, wherein the image comprises a plurality of image layers, and wherein each image layer references one or more data blocks. A request is received for a target data block from an active process operating on the image. Data structures associated with the target data bock are then accessed, wherein the data structures comprise metadata of a previous lookup path that was performed across one or more of the image layers of the image to access the target data block. The metadata of the data structures is utilized to access an existing in-memory copy of the target data block without having to traverse the previous lookup path, and the in-memory copy of target data block is returned to the active process.