FPGAs: a new point in the database design space

In line with the insight that “one size” of databases will not fit all application needs [19], the database community is currently exploring various alternatives to commodity, CPUbased system designs. One particular candidate in this trend are field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), programmable chips that allow tailor-made hardware designs optimized for specific systems, applications, or even user queries. With a focus on database use, this tutorial introduces into FPGA technology, demonstrates its potential, but also pinpoints some challenges that need to be addressed before FPGA-accelerated database systems can go mainstream. The goal of this tutorial is to develop 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. Categories and Subject Desc...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: EDBT
• Authors: René Müller, Jens Teubner
• Keywords: Database, Database Processing, EDBT 2010, FPGA