IBM Files Patent For GPU-Accelerated Databases
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 4:24 pm
I've been meaning to post this up!
Toms Hardware
Toms Hardware
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....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."