FPGA: what's in it for a database?

ABSTRACT

While there seems to be a general agreement that next years' systems will include many processing cores, it is often overlooked that these systems will also include an increasing number of different cores (we already see dedicated units for graphics or network processing). Orchestrating the diversity of processing functionality is going to be a major challenge in the upcoming years, be it to optimize for performance or for minimal energy consumption.

We expect field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs or "programmable hardware") to soon play the role of yet another processing unit, found in commodity computers. It is clear that the new resource is going to be too precious to be ignored by database systems, but it is unclear how FPGAs could be integrated into a DBMS. With a focus on database use, this tutorial introduces into the emerging technology, demonstrates its potential, but also pinpoints some challenges that need to be addressed before FPGA-accelerated database systems can go mainstream. Attendees will gain an intuition of an FPGA development cycle, receive guidelines for a "good" FPGA design, but also learn the limitations that hardware-implemented database processing faces. Our more high-level ambition is to spur a broader interest in database processing on novel hardware technology.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.4 Systems

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.5 COMPUTER SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
      C.5.4 VLSI Systems

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
data processing vlsi, fpga, hardware acceleration