IBM Files Patent For GPU-Accelerated Databases

[Sabre]

I've been meaning to post this up!

Toms Hardware

Instead of traditional disk-based queries and an approach that slows performance via memory latencies and processors waiting for data to be fetched from the memory, IBM envisions in-GPU-memory tables as technology that could, in addition to disk tables, significantly accelerate database processing. According to a patent filed by the company, "GPU enabled programs are well suited to problems that involve data-parallel computations where the same program is executed on different data with high arithmetic intensity."
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According to the patent applications, using GPU acceleration for databases "may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the "C" programming language or similar programming languages." To cover all of its bases, IBM also states that the "program code may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server."

AFAIK, they are still the leader on patents, and this one shows why. Great idea and written generically enough that they can apply it to many things. lol, not sure if that is good or bad though....

[avriette]

But I can already build a database like Postgres, link it against OpenMPI or OpenCL, and have support for the GPU or clustering. The "running on the GPU" part is not hard -- you can do that right now. The hard part is optimizing code that's not intended to run on CUDA, like database code, so that it runs faster. Splitting memory and tasking up into portions for GPUs is well-understood. I think the abstract is a little misleading. Surely they've patented their method for leveraging extant GPGPU libraries?

[Sabre]

Yep, you sure can build it now... just remember when that patent goes through, you'll be paying royalties on it...