What Is a Database Machine?

A database machine is actually a dedicated computer system. Its main job is to be responsible for the storage, query, access, maintenance, protection, and management of data information in the entire system to support the entire system to work efficiently. The main design ideas adopted by database machines include multiprocessor systems, parallel processing of hardware, software, and intelligent channels.

Database machines are an important part of fifth-generation computer systems. It is itself a local dedicated computer system. Its work is mainly to store, manage, access and protect the data in the system.

In terms of the development of the computer's internal data management and processing system, it has roughly gone through the following stages. At this initial stage, the computer processing problems are relatively simple, mainly the problems of numerical calculation types, the amount of information is relatively small, and the data is general. No sharing is required, real-time processing requirements are not prominent, and data confidentiality requirements are not high. For such processing problems, the file system can well implement data management, access, and protection. The data is completely serial input and output and is processed serially on the central processing unit. Obviously, at this stage, the speed of data processing and the degree of sharing are very low. With the development of management science in the database system stage, the focus of computer data processing has gradually shifted from numerical calculations to non-numerical calculations of management systems. At this time, the amount of information in data processing has increased greatly, and higher requirements have been placed on data sharing, real-time processing of information, and data confidentiality.

Because the database system can better solve the problems of sharing and confidentiality of a large amount of information, it is currently widely used. When a user submits data access, query, and other requirements to the database management system, the database management system first translates these commands into the corresponding basic machine instruction set target program and then executes the target program to access the memory through the input and output interfaces. data. The processing or calculation of these data is performed in memory. Analyzing the above process, we can see some problems in the current database system:

The database management system is a software system that must occupy memory and the running time of the central processing unit. A relatively complete database management system is often a heavy burden on the host system.

Because all data must be accessed through the input-output interface, and the transmission speed of the input-output interface is much slower than the speed of the central processing unit, the speed and amount of data processed by the database management system Can't raise it very high. In other words, the input-output interface becomes a "bottleneck" of the database management system.

In order to access the information that users really need, the database management system must query, check, and process many redundant information. According to statistics, for a database system, among the information exchanged, only the information that is really needed is called the rate, that is, some redundant information is passed through the mouth, which is even more important. The burden of the "bottleneck" part.

The host computer is usually a general-purpose computer, and its functions must be designed with all aspects in mind. It is not possible to design its hardware system and instruction structure specifically for the convenience of the database management system. This limits the further improvement of the performance of the database management system.

Some approaches to the above issues have led to database machines. A database machine is actually a dedicated computer system. Its main job is to be responsible for the storage, query, access, maintenance, protection, and management of data information in the entire system to support the entire system to work efficiently. The main design ideas adopted by database machines include multiprocessor systems, parallel processing of hardware, software, and intelligent channels.

Database machines are a promising new research area. As an important part of the fifth generation computer, the maturity and improvement of the database machine will have an important impact on the development of the fifth generation computer. Therefore, database machines have been highly valued by computer scientists from various countries. In just a few years, they have developed from a preliminary idea to the trial production and operation of practical models. The development speed is very prominent. At present, database machines still have many problems to be solved in theory and practice. ^[1]