Re: Using the GPU

"Billings, John" <John(dot)Billings(at)PAETEC(dot)com> writes:

> Does anyone think that PostgreSQL could benefit from using the video
> card as a parallel computing device? I'm working on a project using
> Nvidia's CUDA with an 8800 series video card to handle non-graphical
> algorithms. I'm curious if anyone thinks that this technology could be
> used to speed up a database? If so which part of the database, and what
> kind of parallel algorithms would be used?

There has been some interesting research on sorting using the GPU which could
be very interesting for databases.

However I think Postgres would be unlikely to go the route of having compiled
driver code for every possible video card. It's unlikely to be interesting for
database developers until there's some abstract interface designed for these
kinds of optimizations which it can use without caring about the specific
graphics card.

Perhaps this can be done using OpenGL already but I kind of doubt it.

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com