GPU-Based Acceleration For PostgreSQL

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A developer has modified the PostgreSQL database software so that it can exploit GPGPU computing for faster performance. 

Kobei KaiGai, a software architect at NEC, has been working on GPGPU acceleration for PostgreSQL going back to 2011. Originally he was using a CUDA-based approach but he's shifted now to using the vendor-neutral OpenCL. His implementation supports many PostgreSQL functions and data types. The implementation can also perform full-table scans, hash joins, and pre-process of aggregation all with GPUs. 

This project to yield GPU acceleration with PostgreSQL is called PG-Storm. Going in the future there is a desire to expose more logics and functions on the GPU implementation. 

PG-Strom is open-source and is hosted on GitHub. Those wishing to learn more about this GPGPU support for PostgreSQL can also see the PG-Strom slides embedded below.

 

 

Thought this might be news worthy as lots of us deal with database servers on the daily. I personally like PostgreSQL for its strong MySQL similarities.

[rockking1379]

Personally I find that very interesting

[Misanthrope]

Damn it! If we had this 3 years ago I could have talked my previous boss into upgrading my PC to a workstation with gpus for performance purposes. I need to find another job in BI and get me a system with a couple of 980s for business purposes of course

[monstercameron]

this screams for hsa! gpu accelerate what can be and fall back to the cpu, or there might be workloads where can work together sans pcie latency.

[rockking1379]

Pure SSD based database server + GPU accelerated actions = awesome speed

[imthewalrus]

I prefer mariadb but that's just me :<

[rockking1379]

I prefer mariadb but that's just me :<

To each their own. If only we could GPU accelerate any database server.

[Plasma]

great now we need to add firepro gpus to db servers

[wpirobotbuilder]

This is awesome. A server with a four processors, SSD storage, and 10Gb network connections is already an amazing database server. Adding a GPU or two would be awesome.

 

HSA can definitely help here, but this seems like an application where a dedicated GPU would be much better -- huge databases will require huge amounts of GPU power to accelerate effectively. Adding a discrete GPU is a much more effective solution than changing CPU setups. That being said, adding HSA CPUs will make smaller databases perform better as well.

 

Off topic, I'm a MySQL guy, no particular reason