UPDATED 07:00 EDT / MAY 30 2018

BIG DATA

SQream DB lands $26.4M round for its GPU-powered database

Structured query language database startup SQream Technologies seems to be gaining traction after landing a $26.4 million round of funding.

The Series B round was led by China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., with participation from existing and new investors including Hanaco Venture Capital, Sistema.vc, World Trade Ventures, Glory Ventures and Silvertech Ventures.

SQream is the developer of SQream DB, which is a highly specialized SQL database that’s powered by graphics processing units rather than central processing units used in personal computers and servers, and designed for analyzing large data stores at lower costs than similar databases. SQream DB, which uses Nvidia Corp.’s GPUs in order to accelerate workloads beyond what standard SQL databases can do, is designed to handle up to hundreds of terabytes of data, the company said.

Asked why he sees GPUs as more beneficial than CPUs, SQream Chief Executive Officer Ami Gal told SiliconANGLE that it’s all about the raw speed they offer.

“Traditionally, CPUs have been doubling in speed about every two years, according to Moore’s Law,” Gal said. “However, CPUs have stalled since around 2010, and GPU speed is now increasing at twice the rate of CPUs. Not only do they perform up to 100 times faster than CPUs in many tasks, they are also much smaller, with a 16-GPU server akin to a 1,000-CPU cluster.”

Gal explained this speed provides a number of advantages for those wanting to run data-intensive workloads, the most important being that it enables near real-time exploration of data and extremely fast data ingest that simply isn’t possible with traditional CPUs. Still, Gal said, the SQream DB database is versatile and will make use of CPUs in some instances where these chips are more suitable for the desired workloads.

“With SQream DB, we really try to make the most of the resources the host system offers,” Gal said. “For example, with our highly optimized query compiler and plan optimizer, SQream DB might decide to perform some operations on the CPU, if it thinks the overhead of copying data to and from the GPU would slow down the process. Therefore, the compiler will decide which columns will go to the GPU for processing, and which will stay on the host and be processed by the CPU, making the most of all available computing resources.”

Gal said SQream DB is best suited for handling massive workloads of structured data that require fast data ingestion while retaining high-throughput queries that can benefit from the power of GPUs. “SQream especially excels when complex queries are involved, such as combining data from many tables, without time-consuming manual indexing or pre-aggregation.”

SQream DB is currently available on public cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, IBM Bluemix and Microsoft Azure, as well as on-premises. The company is also planning to bring SQream DB to Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of its new investor Alibaba, which seems to be especially enthusiastic about it.

“SQream is uniquely positioned to provide enterprises with the solution they require to lower the barrier for accessing and analyzing rapidly growing, large-scale data stores in the cloud,” said Chaoqun Zhan, Alibaba’s director of database business.

Image: SQream Technologies

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