
Is GPU Database a Hype? - cnmjbm
All GPU based databases boast hundreds or even thousands of times faster than traditional databases. From their annual revenues and growth in recent years, however, they have obviously been going nowhere. Will GPU databases be pits of hypes that simply burn VC cash?
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hfmuehleisen
The crux here is the transfer of data into the very limited RAM of the GPU. If
the data is already conveniently placed on the GPU, they are indeed thousands
of time faster. But this is mostly a situation that is artificially created
for benchmarks. If the transfer is taken into account, usually CPU-based
systems win.

Database query processing (SQL) usually requires a very low amount of compute
cycles per byte of data (e.g. filter, hash table builds, ...), which means
that the GPU cannot really take advantage of its compute power.

For ML this is a very different situation, lots of compute on few bytes, which
is why we see GPUs and TPUs seriously being used there.

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cnmjbm
The point that ML requires lots of compute on few bytes makes senses as ML
performs mostly repetitive matrix operations, but doesn't a series of SQL
queries on database data with a "star schema" also require lots of compute on
the same bytes?

