Efficient Computing of Relational Algebraic Primitives in a Database Machine Architecture
IEEE Transactions on Computers
A Special-Function Unit for Sorting and Sort-Based Database Operations
IEEE Transactions on Computers
Tight bounds on the complexity of parallel sorting
IEEE Transactions on Computers
The art of computer programming, volume 3: (2nd ed.) sorting and searching
The art of computer programming, volume 3: (2nd ed.) sorting and searching
Bounds to Complexities of Networks for Sorting and for Switching
Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Hardware sorter and its application to data base machine
ISCA '82 Proceedings of the 9th annual symposium on Computer Architecture
IBM Journal of Research and Development
Optimizing Large Join Queries Using A Graph-Based Approach
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
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The design and analysis of a special function unit for database operations (SFU-DB) that uses a novel hardware sorting module, the automatic retrieval memory (ARM), are described. The SFU-DB is a functionally independent unit that efficiently performs certain nonnumeric operations. It can function as a coprocessor for a host CPU or as a special processing unit in a highly parallel processing system. The ARM implements in hardware a true distribution-based sort algorithm that requires no comparison operations. Without performing any comparison, the SFU-DB avoids the lower bound constraint on comparison-based sorting algorithms and achieves, for the worst case, a complexity of O(n) for both execution time and main memory size. Using the fundamental sort algorithm with slight modifications. the SFU-DB also uses the ARM as an engine for other primitive database operations such as relational join, elimination of duplicates, set union, set intersection, and set difference, also with complexity of O(n). The SFU-DB/ARM architecture is rather simple and requires only a modest amount of specialized hardware. The specialized hardware has been designed and simulated for fabrication using CMOS gate arrays, and the remainder of the SFU-DB has been simulated in software using Turbo Pascal running on an IBM-PC.