Modern database engines are bandwidth bound. Moving data to and from GPUs is exp...

		jandrewrogers on March 12, 2025 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Sorting algorithms with CUDA Modern database engines are bandwidth bound. Moving data to and from GPUs is expensive and slow by database engine standards so any performance gain due to higher memory bandwidth is usually lost in the data transfer overhead and much lower effective I/O bandwidth. Every database co-processor, not just GPUs, have had the same issue.

As they say, a coprocessor is a box that turns your cpu-bound problem into an i/o-bound problem.