meaning - How should I understand this inversion?

I'm confused with the following sentence:

In this section, we look at how the shuffle works, as a basic understanding would be helpful, should you need to optimize a Map-Reduce program.

How do I understand the grammar and the meaning of this sentence?

Answer

If you could rephrase the "should you..." part, it would become "in case...". So it would be like in the rephrased example below.

It basically means "in the event of/that...":

In this section, we look at how the shuffle works, as a basic understanding would be helpful, in case you needed to optimize a Map-Reduce program.

See also this example taken from the NOAD:

Should anyone arrive late, admission is likely to be refused.

[In case/in the event that someone arrives late, admission is likely to be refused.]