From: | Tom Allison <tom(at)tacocat(dot)net> |
---|---|
To: | Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> |
Cc: | Alexander Staubo <alex(at)purefiction(dot)net>, Alban Hertroys <alban(at)magproductions(dot)nl>, "Billings, John" <John(dot)Billings(at)paetec(dot)com>, pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org |
Subject: | Re: Using the GPU |
Date: | 2007-06-16 17:56:00 |
Message-ID: | 46742430.3040607@tacocat.net |
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Lists: | pgsql-general |
Tom Lane wrote:
> "Alexander Staubo" <alex(at)purefiction(dot)net> writes:
>> On 6/16/07, Tom Allison <tom(at)tacocat(dot)net> wrote:
>>> It might make an interesting project, but I would be really depressed
>>> if I had to go buy an NVidia card instead of investing in more RAM to
>>> optimize my performance! <g>
>
>> Why does it matter what kind of hardware you can (not "have to") buy
>> to give your database a performance boost? With a GPU, you would have
>> one more component that you could upgrade to improve performance;
>> that's more possibilities, not less. I only see a problem with a
>> database that would *require* a GPU to achieve adequate performance,
>> or to function at all, but that's not what this thread is about.
>
> Too often, arguments of this sort disregard the opportunity costs of
> development going in one direction vs another. If we make any
> significant effort to make Postgres use a GPU, that's development effort
> spent on that rather than some other optimization; and more effort,
> ongoing indefinitely, to maintain that code; and perhaps the code
> will preclude other possible optimizations or features because of
> assumptions wired into it. So you can't just claim that using a GPU
> might be interesting; you have to persuade people that it's more
> interesting than other places where we could spend our
> performance-improvement efforts.
You have a good point.
I don't know enough about how/what people use databases for in general to know
what would be a good thing to work on. I'm still trying to find out the
particulars of postgresql, which are always sexy.
I'm also trying to fill in the gaps between what I already know in Oracle and
how to implement something similar in postgresq. But I probably don't know
enough about Oracle to do much there either.
I'm a believer in strong fundamentals over glamour.
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