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 are
and arent valid under Netezzas form of MVCC (MultiVersion Concurrency
Control).
* Compression and/or decompression (Im a little confused as to
which, but I imagine its both)
* 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 its light under a bushel
is in the matter of FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays). FPGAs are
used to process data as it is streamed off disk. Note that this is
important to understand. Most data warehouse appliances (and, indeed,
conventional products) use a caching architecture whereby data is read
from disk and then held in cache for processing. Netezza, on the other
hand, uses an approach that queries the data as it comes off disk before
passing the results on to memory. In other words it uses a streaming
architecture in which the data is streamed through the queries (whose
programs have been loaded into the FPGA) rather than being stored (even
if in memory) and then queried.
--
Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com
+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +
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