Paula Hawthorn
ABSTRACT
Specialized, single function processors can be built to be faster and cheaper than general purpose processors. Most database machines use such special purpose processors to manipulate data, with a general purpose managing processor to control the special purpose processors and perform utility functions. In this paper, the organization and use of these data manipulation processors is explored. Database machines are classified into single data manipulation processor systems, multiple disk-associated data manipulation processor systems, and multiple cache-associated processor systems. Examples of actual database machines are given for each category.Application types are classified into business, bibliographic search, and statistical analysis systems. A metric is developed to compare the performance of the categories of database machines with respect to the application types. The metric is the effective instruction rate, which is comparable to the instruction rate (millions of instructions per second) for conventional computers. It is shown that the effective instruction rate is highly sensitive to the proportion of work performed in the database machine's data manipulation processors. Therefore, determining the work that must be performed in the machine's managing processor is found to be important to determining the performance of the machine.Database machine performance for each category of database machines is compared for each type of application. It is shown that single processor systems are best for business applications; that disk-based multiple processor systems are best for bibliographic search applications; and that hybrid systems are best for statistical analysis applications. Therefore, the design of the organization of data manipulation processors is shown to be application-dependent.
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