k-ary search on modern processors

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Abstract

This paper presents novel tree-based search algorithms that exploit the SIMD instructions found in virtually all modern processors. The algorithms are a natural extension of binary search: While binary search performs one comparison at each iteration, thereby cutting the search space in two halves, our algorithms perform k comparisons at a time and thus cut the search space into k pieces. On traditional processors, this so-called k-ary search procedure is not beneficial because the cost increase per iteration offsets the cost reduction due to the reduced number of iterations. On modern processors, however, multiple scalar operations can be executed simultaneously, which makes k-ary search attractive. In this paper, we provide two different search algorithms that differ in terms of e ciency and memory access patterns. Both algorithms are first described in a platform independent way and then evaluated on various state-of-the-art processors. Our experiments suggest that k-ary search provides significant performance improvements (factor two and more) on most platforms.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDaMoN '09: Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Data Management on New Hardware
Pages52-60
Number of pages9
ISBN (electronic)978-1-60558-701-1
Publication statusPublished - 2009
Peer-reviewedYes

Conference

Title5th International Workshop on Data Management on New Hardware, DaMoN 2009 in Conjunction with ACM SIGMOD/PODS Conference
Duration28 June 2009
CityProvidence, RI
CountryUnited States of America

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0001-8107-2775/work/200630401

Keywords

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