Re: CUDA Sorting

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Vitor Reus <vitor(dot)reus(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm implementing a CUDA based sorting on PostgreSQL, and I believe it
> can improve the ORDER BY statement performance in 4 to 10 times. I
> already have a generic CUDA sort that performs around 10 times faster
> than std qsort. I also managed to load CUDA into pgsql.
NVIDIA cards are not that good as ATI cards. ATI cards are much faster
with integer operations, and should be ideal for sorting transaction
ids or sort of similar numbers (unless you are going to sort prices
stored as float, which ATI still beats NVIDIA but not by that much)
Another problem you have to deal with is PCI Express speed. Transfer
is very slow compared to RAM. You will have to put more GPUs to match
the performance and this will increase solution cost. There was a
sorting algorithm for 4 CPU cores that was beating sort on a GTX 285
(I don't have the link, sorry), but CPUs are not that bad with sorting
like you think.
AMD is already working with embedding GPUs into the motherboard, if I
am not mistaken there are already some of them on the market available
for purchase.
Anyone who uses a tiny embedded ATI for sorting problems with integers
will outperform your NVIDIA based PCI-Express connected GPU with CUDA,
because basically your algorithm will waste a lot of time transfering
data to GPU and getting it back.
But if you use embedded ATI GPU , you can also use SSE registers on
each CPU core to add more performance to your algorithm. It is not
going to be a very hardware compatible solution but if you want good
speed/cost, this should be the best solution.
I recommend doing some bandwidth benchmark test before you start coding.

Regards
Nulik
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