Non-relational Databases on FPGAs: Survey, Design Decisions, Challenges

Non-relational database systems (NRDS) such as graph and key-value have gained attention in various trending business analytical application domains. However, while CPU performance scaling becomes increasingly more difficult, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA)- accelerated NRDS not been systematically studied yet. This survey describes categorizes the inherent differences non-trivial tradeoffs of relevant classes (i.e., graph, document, key-value, wide-column) well their commonalities context common design decisions when building a system with FPGAs. In particular, we highlight accelerator tasks, FPGA placement, patterns, justification for using FPGAs different contexts. We close open research engineering challenges to outline future FPGA-accelerated NRDS.