Algorithms for Sorting and Sort-Based Database Operations Using a Special-Function Unit

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a Special Function Unit for DataBase operations (SFU-DB), which is used as a backend database machine for performing sort and sort-based database operations. This machine implements a most-significant-digit-first radix sort algorithm by using a special hardware device called Automatic Retrieval Memory (ARM). The ARM performs an efficient content-to-address mapping to sort the data. Without performing any comparisons in the sorting process, the SFU-DB avoids the lower bound constraint on comparison-based sorting algorithms and achieves a complexity of O(n) for both execution time and main memory size. Based on the sorting algorithm, the SFU-DB also performs other primitive database operations such as relational join, elimination of duplicates, set union, set intersection, and set difference with a complexity of O(n). The capacity of the SFU-DB is limited by the size of its main memory rather than by the number of special processing elements as in most sorting machines. Hence, the SFU-DB has a better cost/performance and is more suitable for processing very large databases. Currently, a prototype SFU-DB system is under construction.KeywordsSorting AlgorithmData MemoryDatabase OperationList MemorySorting OperationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.