Techniques for more efficient usage of memory-to-CPU bandwidth

US8572131B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Oracle International Corporation · US

Inventors

• Lawrence J. Ellison · Atherton, US
• Amit Ganesh · San Jose, US
• Vineet Marwah · San Ramon, US
• Jesse Kamp · Castro Valley, US
• Anindya C. Patthak · Fremont, US
• Shasank K. Chavan · Menlo Park, US
• Michael J. Gleeson · Saratoga, US
• Allison L. Holloway · Redwood City, US
• Manosiz Bhattacharyya · San Jose, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Dec 7, 2012
• Grant date: Oct 29, 2013
• Expiry date: Dec 7, 2032

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F16/284
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Techniques are provided for more efficiently using the bandwidth of the I/O path between a CPU and volatile memory during the performance of database operation. Relational data from a relational table is stored in volatile memory as column vectors, where each column vector contains values for a particular column of the table. A binary-comparable format may be used to represent each value within a column vector, regardless of the data type associated with the column. The column vectors may be compressed and/or encoded while in volatile memory, and decompressed/decoded on-the-fly within the CPU. Alternatively, the CPU may be designed to perform operations directly on the compressed and/or encoded column vector data. In addition, techniques are described that enable the CPU to perform vector processing operations on the column vector values.