Database Systems Talk
Monday, November 16, 2009
4:00 p.m., AKW 200

Host: Daniel Abadi

Speaker: Stavros Harizopoulos, HP Labs
Title: Where do my cycles and watts go? Exploring new opportunities in database systems research

Abstract: Database systems include a suite of features that were developed in the 70s and 80s. Advances in modern processors, memories, and networks mean that today's computers are vastly different from those of 30 years ago, such that many databases will now fit in main memory, and most online transactions can be processed in milliseconds or less. Moreover, rising energy costs in large data centers are driving an agenda for energy efficient computing in all aspects of data processing and management. Yet database architecture has changed little.

In this talk, we will go over the results and implications of two recent studies. First, focusing on performance, we look at some interesting variants of conventional database systems that one might build exploiting recent hardware trends, and speculate on their performance through a detailed instruction-level breakdown of the major components involved in a transaction processing database system. Then, focusing on energy efficiency, we characterize the power-use profiles of database operators under different configuration parameters and then experiment with several classes of database systems and storage managers, seeking the most energy-efficient configuration for a database server.