Basic Database Operations on the Butterfly Parallel Processor: Experiment Results.

Abstract : The next phase in speeding up database queries will be through the use of highly parallel computers. This paper will discuss the basic database operations (select, project, natural join, and scaler aggregates) on a shared-memory multiple instruction stream, multiple data stream (MIMD) computer and the problems associated with implementing them. Some problems associated with getting maximum parallelization are improper data division and hot spots. Improper data division results when the number of tasks does not divide evenly among the processors. Hot spots or contentions occur due to locking if accesses are made to the same segment of a RAMFile and also if attempts are made to get data from the same remote processor at the same time. These algorithms have been implemented on the Butterfly Parallel Processor, and the results of our experiments are described in detail.