Re: CUDA Sorting

From: Greg Stark <stark(at)mit(dot)edu>
To: Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: CUDA Sorting
Date: 2011-09-19 14:54:51
Message-ID: CAM-w4HO0OscBzrre=Pcv17VEXfj6UEV38Gj2MOF=O5e4e13DXA@mail.gmail.com
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On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> The main problem here is that the sort of hardware commonly used for
> production database servers doesn't have any serious enough GPU to support
> CUDA/OpenCL available

Of course that could change if adding a GPU would help Postgres... I
would expect it to help mostly for data warehouse batch query type
systems, especially ones with very large i/o subsystems that can
saturate the memory bus with sequential i/o. "Run your large batch
queries twice as fast by adding a $400 part to your $40,000 server"
might be a pretty compelling sales pitch :)

That said, to help in the case I described you would have to implement
the tapesort algorithm on the GPU as well. I expect someone has
implemented heaps for CUDA/OpenCL already though.

--
greg

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