Hi Thomas, you said:
For the record, this is not exactly a new thing. Netezza (a PostgreSQL
fork started in 1999 IBM) used FPGAs. Now there's swarm64 [1], another
PostgreSQL fork, also using FPGAs with newer PostgreSQL releases.
yes, I found the swarm thing on Google, and heard about Netezza years
ago from the Indian consulting contractor that had worked on it (their
price point was way out of the range that made sense for the academic
place where I worked then).
But there is good news, better than you thought when you wrote:
Those are proprietary forks, though. The main reason why the community
itself is not working on this directly (at least not on pgsql-hackers)
is exactly that it requires specialized hardware, which the devs
probably don't have, making development impossible, and the regular
customers are not asking for it either (one of the reasons being limited
availability of such hardware, especially for customers running in the
cloud and not being even able to deploy custom appliances).
I don't think this will change, unless the access to systems with FPGAs
becomes much easier (e.g. if AWS introduces such instance type).
It already has changed! Amazon F1 instances. And Xilinx has already
packaged a demo https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B07BVSZL51. This
demo appears very limited though (only for TPC-H query 6 and 12 or so).
Even the hardware to hold in your hand is now much cheaper. I know a guy
who's marketing a board with 40 GB/s throughput. I don't have price but
I can't imagine the board plus 1 TB disk to be much outside of US$ 2k. I
could sponsor that if someone wants to have a serious shot at it.
Is there a PostgreSQL foundation I could donate to, 501(c)(3) tax
exempt? I can donate and possibly find some people at Purdue
University who might take this on. Interest?
I don't think there's any such non-profit, managing/funding development.
At least I'm not avare of it. There are various non-profits around the
world, but those are organizing events and local communities.
I'd say the best way to do something like this is to either talk to one
of the companies participating in PostgreSQL devopment (pgsql-hackers is
probably a good starting point), or - if you absolutely need to go
through a non-profit - approach a university (which does not mean people
from pgsql-hackers can't be involved, of course). I've been involved in
a couple of such research projects in Europe, not sure what exactly is
the situation/rules in US.
Yes, might work with a University directly. Although I will contact the
PostgreSQL foundation in the US also.
regards,
-Gunther
