Re: Parallel Sort

On 5/13/13 9:28 AM, Noah Misch wrote:
> It would be great if one client session could take advantage of multiple CPU
> cores. EnterpriseDB wishes to start the trek into this problem space for 9.4
> by implementing parallel internal (i.e. not spilling to disk) sort. This
> touches on a notable subset of the infrastructure components we'll need for
> parallel general query. My intent is to map out the key design topics, hear
> about critical topics I hadn't considered, and solicit feedback on the quality
> of the high-level plan. Full designs for key pieces will come later.

Have you considered GPU-based sorting? I know there's been discussion in the past.

To me, the biggest advantage of GPU sorting is that most of the concerns you've laid out go away; a backend that needs to sort just throws data at the GPU to do the actual sorting; all the MVCC issues and what not remain within the scope of a single backend.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Data Architect jim(at)nasby(dot)net
512.569.9461 (cell) http://jim.nasby.net