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Cache-Conscious Query Processing

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Synonyms

Cache-aware query processing; Cache-sensitive query processing

Definition

Query processing algorithms that are designed to efficiently exploit the available cache units in the memory hierarchy. Cache-conscious algorithms typically employ knowledge of architectural parameters such as cache size and latency. This knowledge can be used to ensure that the algorithms have suitable temporal and/or spatial locality on the target platform.

Historical Background

Between 1980 and 2005, processing speeds improved by roughly four orders of magnitude, while memory speeds improved by less than a single order of magnitude. As of 2017, it is common for data accesses to RAM to require several hundred CPU cycles to resolve. Many database workloads have shifted from being I/O bound to being memory/CPU-bound as the amount of memory per machine has been increasing. For such workloads, improving the locality of data-intensive operations can have a direct impact on the system’s overall performance.

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Kenneth A. Ross

Authors
  1. Kenneth A. Ross
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kenneth A. Ross .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Informatique et Communications, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 14, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Anastasia Ailamaki

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Ross, K. (2017). Cache-Conscious Query Processing. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_658-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_658-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

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