Re: Amazon now supporting GPU focused EC2 instances

Jeroen Vermeulen wrote:
> On 2010-11-15 18:49, Greg Stark wrote:
> 
> > I've seen papers on doing relational joins using GPUs and I'm sure
> > there are other algorithms we wonderful stuff we could do. But if it
> > comes at the cost of being able to handle arbitrary join clauses it'll
> > be a tough sacrifice to make.
> 
> Perhaps the coolest use of all is as an intermediate filtering stage for 
> spatial joins, using collision detection.  Draw your data and your 
> search region (slightly enlarged) as objects and ask the graphics card 
> if the search region collides with anything.  Much like it might ask "is 
> this player character bumping into any walls?"

Netezza has FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays) for each disk drive
that performs a similar function:
http://www.dbms2.com/2009/08/08/netezza-fpga/The longer answer is:    * Projections    * Restrictions/selections    *
Visibility,which for now seems to mean recognizing which rows areand arent valid under Netezzas form of MVCC
(MultiVersionConcurrencyControl).    * Compression and/or decompression (Im a little confused as towhich, but I imagine
itsboth)    * Netezzas form of UDFs (User-Defined Functions)
 

More details:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/03/netezza_annual_conference_roundup/Another area in which Netezza has been hiding
itslight under a bushelis in the matter of FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays). FPGAs areused to process data as it
isstreamed off disk. Note that this isimportant to understand. Most data warehouse appliances (and, indeed,conventional
products)use a caching architecture whereby data is readfrom disk and then held in cache for processing. Netezza, on
theotherhand, uses an approach that queries the data as it comes off disk beforepassing the results on to memory. In
otherwords it uses a streamingarchitecture in which the data is streamed through the queries (whoseprograms have been
loadedinto the FPGA) rather than being stored (evenif in memory) and then queried.
 

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
 + It's impossible for everything to be true. +