RISC PROCESSORS IN A MASSIVELY PARALLEL DATABASE MACHINE

The paper presents an application of RISC processors in a massively parallel database machine (LSDM). Depending on the configuration, the database machine can contain a few thousand processors, each of which is equipped with a disc drive. The database model used is the semantic binary model. The combination of the database model and the architecture of LSDM provides an environment where both massively parallel computation and massively parallel I/O are possible. This paper analyses the characteristics of LSDM and argues that RISC processors are the best choice for the database machine. This machine is presented as further evidence of the potential of RISC architecture. Performance evaluation and simulation results based on the characteristics of Inmos transputers are also presented. © 1990.