Ingres speeds up business software with VectorWise

The Ingres VectorWise project is expected to ship sometime in 2010

Database developer Ingres plans to radically speed up the performance of its products with the introduction of a new database engine developed by VectorWise, a spin-off from Amsterdam's Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica research institute working in partnership with Intel.

The Ingres VectorWise project aims to integrate the VectorWise database engine into the next generation of Ingres' open-source business platform, expected to ship sometime in 2010, according to the firm.

VectorWise is based on a novel query processing architecture that uses vector processing techniques to handle data sets. The vector size is tuned such that all vectors in a query fit inside the cache of modern processors such as Intel's Nehalem-based Xeon 5500 series.

This enables a tenfold increase in speed and processing power when compared to conventional database architectures such as those used by Oracle and Sybase, the company said, and will allow businesses to manage data at reduced cost using more modest hardware, or perform data analysis tasks that were previously not feasible.

"This technology breakthrough will enable a chief finance officer to easily analyse hundreds of millions of business transactions in seconds, even on a laptop at 35,000 feet," said Ingres chief executive Roger Burkhardt.

In a white paper published on its web site, Ingres disclosed benchmark figures indicating that the VectorWise engine is capable of processing a query involving six million items in just over 0.2 seconds, compared with 16.5 seconds for Ingres 9.0.

Ingres said that business software had failed to keep up with advances in chip and memory technologies, and that the VectorWise project will redress the balance and enable software to make the best use of modern processors.